The Friends Ambulance Unit and the Friends Relief Service, 1939 to 1948

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

2019

Training Friends and Overseas Relief: The Friends Ambulance Unit and the Friends Relief Service, 1939 to 1948

Nerissa Kalee Aksamit West Virginia University, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Aksamit, Nerissa Kalee, "Training Friends and Overseas Relief: The Friends Ambulance Unit and the Friends Relief Service, 1939 to 1948" (2019). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 7405. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/7405

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2019

Training Friends and Overseas Relief: The Friends Ambulance Unit and the Friends Relief Service, 1939 to 1948

Nerissa Kalee Aksamit West Virginia University, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd

Part of the Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, European History Commons, and the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Commons

This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Research Repository @ WVU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected].

Training Friends and Overseas Relief: The Friends Ambulance Unit and the Friends Relief Service, 1939 to 1948

Nerissa K. Aksamit

Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in History

Katherine Aaslestad, Ph.D., Chair Robert Blobaum, Ph.D. Joseph Hodge, Ph.D. Joshua Arthurs, Ph.D. Cynthia Gorman, Ph.D.

Department of History

Morgantown, West Virginia 2019

Keywords: Humanitarianism; Second World War; Society of Friends; Friends Ambulance Unit; Friends Relief Service; Relief; Rehabilitation; Refugees; Displaced Persons; British Occupation Zone Copyright 2019 Nerissa K. Aksamit

ABSTRACT

Training Friends and Overseas Relief: The Friends Ambulance Unit and the Friends Relief Service, 1939 to 1948

Nerissa K. Aksamit

This transnational case study investigates the establishment and development of training programs by two British faith-based voluntary relief organizations, the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) and the Friends Relief Service (FRS), during the Second World War and explores the implementation of learned skills by members of those organizations working during the immediate postwar period in the British Occupation Zone in Germany. It contributes new perspectives to scholarship on humanitarianism as it highlights both the continuities and ruptures in the approaches to and practices of humanitarian aid. It identifies the Quaker traditions that shaped the work of the FAU and FRS—particularly the core principles of promoting self-help, impartiality, democratic structures, and internationalism—as they delivered relief and fostered the rebuilding of communities in war-torn northern Germany. It demonstrates how small voluntary organizations integrated their values into the new relief structures of planning-mindedness, professionalization and international collaboration that also characterized the larger relief organizations. Although the FAU and FRS shared in their convictions of pacifism, goodwill, and humanitarian service, the two organizations conceptualized their role in relief differently and reflected those differences in their respective training programs and to a substantial extent in their postwar service. The FAU focused on the “first stage” of emergency relief that focused on working alongside military bodies to provide medical and material aid to both civilians and the military. In contrast, the FRS focused on the “second and third stages” that centered on providing impartial relief and rehabilitation to civilian populations that did not require assistance or direction from the military. To provide aid in the “second and third stages,” the FRS trained volunteers for postwar emergency relief and rehabilitation as well as how to foster reconciliation among all populations impacted by the war. Training programs for both the FAU and FRS believed that by integrating past experiences as well as contemporary developments to the approach and practice of humanitarian aid, their relief teams would provide efficient and effective relief in the postwar period. By retaining their core principles and traditional approaches to relief work as well as adopting new professional methods to dispense aid, the relief teams sent to the British Occupation Zone in 1945 exhibited an impressive and unique flexibility as they worked with and alongside displaced populations, camp victims, refugees, and Germans in a landscape engulfed with destruction and displacement. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge and gratefully thank all those who helped me complete this project. The Global Humanitarianism Research Academy provided me with the opportunity to discuss, share, and explore the history of humanitarianism with an amazing group of scholars, as well as conduct research at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland. The a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities at the University of Cologne, offered me the opportunity to conduct research in library and archival holding at the university as well as gain valuable insights from Professor Dr. Habbo Knoch and the graduate students in the History Department. A research grant from the Central European History Society supported my research in the archives at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, the Sandbostel Stalag XB Memorial, and the Ecclesiastical Archive Center in Berlin. Support from the West Virginia University History Department and Eberly College of Arts and Sciences of West Virginia University allowed me to conduct research in London at the Friends House Library and Imperial War Museum.

I am deeply indebted to the librarians and archivists whose advice and extensive knowledge helped make this project possible; all those at the West Virginia University Downtown and Evansdale Libraries, particularly the staff at the inter-library loan office who helped track down some relatively esoteric materials; Lisa McQuillan and the staff at the Friends House Library in London, Klaus Tätzler at the Department of Research and Documentation at Bergen-Belsen Memorial, Ronald Sperling at the Sandbostel Stalag XB Memorial, and the many archivists and staff at the Imperial War Museum in London.

I cannot begin to express my deepest appreciation for my advisor and mentor, Dr. Katherine Aaslestad, whose unwavering support and guidance made it possible for me to complete this project. Her profound belief in my work gave me the confidence to ask the tough questions and become a stronger historian. I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to my committee— Dr. Robert Blobaum, Dr. Joshua Arthurs, Dr. Joseph Hodge, and Dr. Cynthia Gorman—who provided me with invaluable insights and suggestions.

Studying, reading, writing, and researching is both exciting and exhausting; without the love and support from my family and friends none of this would have been possible. I am so extremely grateful to my husband, Dr. Matthew Kesterke, whose love, patience, and encouragement gave me the strength and courage to pursue and complete a PhD.

iii CONTENTS

Acknowledgements iii

Abbreviations v

Chapter One: Introduction 1

Part One: The FAU and the FRS

Chapter Two: Reviving the Friends Ambulance Unit 31

Chapter Three: Building the Friends Relief Service 52

Part Two: Training Volunteers

Chapter Four: Medical Training 70

Chapter Five: Infectious Diseases and (Mal)Nutrition 91

Chapter Six: Ambulance and Transport Services 122

Chapter Seven: The “Refugee Problem” 139

Chapter Eight: Rehabilitation and Reconciliation 165

Part Three: Relief and Rehabilitation in the British Occupation Zone

Chapter Nine: The “First Stage” 187

Chapter Ten: “Stages Two and Three” among Displaced Persons 213

Chapter Eleven: “Stages Two and Three” and the German Youth 245

Chapter Twelve: Conclusions 272

Bibliography 278

iv ABBREVIATIONS

AFSC American Friends Service Council ARA American Relief Association BRCS Joint War Organisation of the British Red Cross and the Order of St. John CAD Civilian Affairs Detachment CCG/BE Control Commission for Germany (British Element) CO Conscientious Objector COBSRA Council of British Societies for Relief Abroad DDT dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane DP Displaced Person EKD Council of the Protestant Church of Germany FAU Friends Ambulance Unit FCRA Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens FOR Fellowship of Reconciliation FRS Friends Relief Service FSC Friends Service Council FWRS Friends War Relief Service FWVRC Friends War Victims Relief Committee ILO International Labour Office ISVP International Voluntary Service for Peace LCC London County Council RAMC Royal Army Medical Corps RS100 (etc.) Relief Section 100 – the term designated to voluntary relief teams working in Europe under the British Red Cross SHAEF Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force UECO University Education Control Officer UNRRA United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration

v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

In 1939, President Roosevelt painted an austere picture of what the postwar world would look like when he said, “there may be not one but ten million or twenty million men, women and children belonging to many races and many religions, living in many countries and possibly on several continents, who will enter into the wide picture—the problem of the human refugee.”1 The concern for a potential humanitarian crisis, as expressed by Roosevelt, had been shared by the

Allied governments, national and international relief organizations, and smaller voluntary relief organizations. Planning and preparation to confront the perceived postwar crisis began among those who had first-hand experience in the humanitarian crises during and after the Great War, that included small voluntary relief organizations such as the British Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) and the Friends Relief Service (FRS).

As a transnational case study, this dissertation will investigate the establishment and ongoing development of training programs by two British faith-based voluntary relief organizations, the FAU and FRS, beginning in 1939 and 1943, respectively, and assess the implementation of learned skills by members of those organizations working in the British Occupation Zone in

Germany between 1944 and 1948. Convictions of pacifism, goodwill, and service formed the foundations of both the FAU and the FRS. These commonalities enabled the two Quaker organizations to work collaboratively as they sought to aid populations suffering during war and crisis at home and overseas. Yet, the two organizations conceptualized their role in relief differently; the FAU mandate focused on what they considered the “first stage” of emergency relief that reflected their work during the Great War as they assisted both civilian and military bodies

1 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel I. Rosenman, and William D. Hassett, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 1938), 549.

with medical aid and material distress. The FRS, however, maintained the traditions and approaches to relief work established by the Friends War Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC) during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the work conducted through official organizations of the Society of Friends during and after the Great War. The FWVRC provided relief to civilian populations exclusively, thus distinguishing itself from the work conducted by rising national and international organizations that provided aid to military bodies. Additionally, the FWVRC focused on the “second and third stages” consisting of relief and rehabilitation conducted after fighting ceased and did not require assistance or direction from the military. Once in Europe, the FAU and

FRS addressed suffering among soldiers and civilians, refugees, displaced persons (DPs), expellees, and internees according to their conception of the “three stages.”

This dissertation will examine how the FAU and the FRS trained volunteers for overseas relief service and the ways in which the skills gained were implemented within the three stages framework by teams in the British Occupation Zone in Germany. The training programs created by the FAU and FRS utilized past experience, particularly during the Great War and interwar years, as evidence of both successful and unsuccessful relief schemes. They incorporated these innovative methods and approaches to relief work in their training programs to offer their volunteers the skills necessary to improve their programs and provide more efficient and effective aid in the field. The organizations recognized, furthermore, that the nature of this war would have a significant impact on the population’s suffering and the methods of relief. Therefore, the organizations incorporated contemporary research and reports and enlisted the help of field experts as a means to better inform volunteers on the expected conditions and possible crises to be confronted. Unlike the larger and recently developed international humanitarian relief organizations, the FAU and FRS as small faith-based bodies demonstrated an impressive and

unique flexibility as they retained their core principles and adopted new professional methods to dispense aid and contribute to rebuilding peace in Europe.

The training programs developed by the FAU and FRS had different aims that reflected the three stages of relief. The FAU focused on training volunteers in emergency and medical relief that included first aid, nursing, stretcher drill and physical training, and incorporated mock emergency situations to prepare volunteers for work near or directly behind wartime front lines.

In contrast, the FRS concentrated their training program on lectures and lessons that would prepare volunteers for postwar emergency relief and rehabilitation, and to foster reconciliation among all populations impacted by war through the incorporation of instruction on contemporary European history, the building and administration of refugee camps, Quakerism and internationalism, and

European languages. Although the FAU and FRS conceptualized relief differently according to the three stages, the FRS training camp at Mount Waltham established a collaborative program with the FAU, offering FAU volunteers the opportunity to develop their skills beyond the first stage of relief. The FAU could participate in FRS training in order to gain the skills needed for the second and third stages of relief.

Following the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the need for relief workers in northwest

Europe became apparent. The destruction and devastation far exceeded that of the Great War; the

Allies had dropped approximately 2.6 million tons of bombs on Europe during the air war, razing the landscapes and destroying infrastructures, creating a level of unprecedented destruction further exacerbated by the millions of displaced populations. The FAU sent teams to Europe in September

1944 and in February 1945 to work alongside the British Army as they pushed further into

Germany. The FAU relief teams began the first stage of relief by assisting the British Army and

Civil Affairs Detachments (CAD) in local hospitals and in twenty-four-hour transit centers that

registered, conducted medical examinations, and began repatriation of DPs. Shortly after the liberation of the prisoner of war camp, Sandbostel, in April 1945, the FAU sent a team into the camp to provide material aid and relief to men suffering from starvation and disease. Other FAU teams moved further into Germany to assist in DP centers and among German populations.

The first FRS team travelled to Europe in February 1945 to provide assistance in Belgium.

While providing aid during air raids in Antwerp, the FRS team received a request to travel to the liberated Nazi concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen near the north-west city of Belsen, Germany.

Prior to movement into Germany, however, the organization challenged the Allied non- fraternization order by insisting that FRS teams have the ability to uphold the principal of impartial relief—aid to Germans as well as victims of the Nazi state. Having secured a position of impartiality in their relief, the FRS teams assisted the British Army and relief teams in emergency medical relief efforts—the first stage of relief—in Bergen-Belsen. Following their work in former

Nazi concentration camps, the first stage of emergency relief began to overlap with the second stage as the need for DP camps became apparent in the April and May 1945. This is not to suggest that the first stage was over, in fact, emergency relief efforts continued over the winter of 1945 and 1946 during “The Battle of Winter.”

The FAU and FRS teams began work in the second stage by aiding in the development and administration of DP camps throughout the British Occupation Zone, which included partnership with members of the DP and German populations. Both the FAU and FRS sought to provide the means and support for DPs to build communities as they waited for either repatriation, emigration, or the process of absorption into the local community. The teams encouraged self-help—a series of self-sustaining practices—through in-camp and out-of-camp locations by integrating DPs into the management of their camp community and local economy. The extensive and desperate DP

population emerged as the primary concern of the British Military Government since the Allied governments decreed that Germans should provide for themselves. The postwar conditions in

Germany made this goal impossible, as German refugees from eastern territories under Soviet and

Polish occupation entered occupied Germany in overwhelming numbers, thus putting a strain on all foodstuffs, materials, and accommodation. The FAU first took the lead in assisting German expellees as well as local German communities in need during the autumn and winter of 1945 and

1946. Just as the first and second stages overlapped, so did the second and third. The teams worked as liaisons between the British Military Government, DPs, and local German communities to support rehabilitation broadly and to foster reconciliation. Additionally, the FAU and FRS assisted in the Allied programs of “re-education,” democratization, and de-Nazification aimed at the

German population.

The FAU recognized the changing nature of relief in Germany beginning in the summer of

1945 and began working on plans with the FRS to transition the organization out of European relief. This meant that during the early spring of 1946, FAU team members interested in continuing work in Germany could transfer to the FRS by June of that year at which point the FAU work in

Europe concluded. That the FRS took in members of the FAU in the spring and summer of 1946 did not necessarily mean that work was expanding, rather that the similar nature of work did not merit two Quaker relief organizations. The FRS began withdrawing from several fields of overseas work beginning in 1946, and by May 1948 the FRS transferred the thirty-six members working in the field and twenty members in administration at the Friends House to the permanent relief body, the Friends Service Council.2 Thus, this dissertation is framed by four key moments in the two organizations: first the revival of the FAU in September 1939; the creation of the FRS in March

2 Roger C. Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1952), 321.

1943; the disbandment of the FAU in June 1946; and the final transfer of relief services from the

FRS to the Friends Service Council in May 1948.

The Great War and Transformations in Humanitarian Aid

In the last two decades, scholarship on twentieth century humanitarianism has benefited from the opening of new archival materials, the revisiting of older materials with new perspectives and questions, and by recent humanitarian crises and challenges to human rights that have shaped current problems and historical inquiry. Combined, these factors have produced a transformation in the way modern humanitarian aid is understood, both academically and in practice. Scholarship has explored the development of and ideological motivations for humanitarian intervention, the relationship between humanitarian action and imperialism, the crucial dynamic between humanitarianism and human rights, and have moved beyond examinations of western forms, approaches, and practices of humanitarian aid.3 Significant to those narratives is tracing how modern humanitarianism developed and changed over time as influenced by various social, political, and economic movements as well as the expanding scale of war and crises. Scholars agree that the period immediately after the Great War—and the destruction and displacement it caused—produced significant transformations in the ideological groundworks and approaches to humanitarianism expressed and practiced during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.4

3 Michael Barnett and Thomas C. Weiss, eds., Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2008); Richard Ashby Wilson and Brown, eds., Humanitarianism and Suffereing: The Mobilization of Empathy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Elizabeth G. Ferris, The Politics of Protection: The Limits of Humanitarian Action (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2011); Fabian Klose, ed., The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas and Practice from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Johannes Paulmann, ed., Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 4 Jessica Reinisch, “Introduction: Relief in the Aftermath of War,” Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 3 (2008): 371–404; Johannes-Dieter Steinert, “British Humanitarian Assistance: Wartime Planning and Postwar Realities,” Journal of Contemporary History, Relief in the Aftermath of War, 43, no. 3 (2008): 421–35; Ben Shephard, “‘Becoming Planning Minded’: The Theory and Practice of Relief 1940-1945,” Journal of Contemporary

Those transformations include a growing disillusionment with the laissez-faire approach that characterized the nineteenth century, the institutionalization of relief organizations, the need for an increasingly international rather than national approach to action, and that aid provided to distant populations should be based on need rather than national identity.

Much of the scholarship focused the transitions and developments that occurred within humanitarianism in the post-1918 period emphasize the role played by European international and national organizations and their responses to the ongoing destruction and suffering caused by the

First World War as well as by the breakdown of empires in Europe. Johannes Paulmann argues that a “refugee regime” emerged around the League of Nations, including such organizations as the Save the Children International Union, as the breakdown of multinational states produced a mass migration of refugees looking for food, shelter, and healthcare.5 The League of Nations utilized and drew on field experts and social sciences to quantify and qualify the experiences and impact of war, and to legitimize humanitarian aid. In doing so, the League of Nations contributed to the “scientific” management of humanitarian aid. He writes, “The League’s officials consciously framed humanitarian questions as ‘technical’ in order to prevent political interest from

History 43, no. 3 (2008): 405–19; Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2011); Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Johannes Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century,” Humanity 4, no. 2 (2013): 215–38; Paulmann, Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century; Matthias Schulz, “Dilemmas of ‘Geneva’ Humanitarian Internationalism: The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Red Cross Movement, 1863-1918,” in Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century, ed. Johannes Paulmann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 346–68; Joëlle Droux, “Life during Wartime: The Save the Children International Union and the Dilemmas of Warfare Relief, 1919-1947,” in Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century, ed. Johannes Paulmann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 185–206; Daniel Roger Maul, “American Quakers, the Emergence of International Humanitarianism, and the Foundation of the American Friends Service Committee, 1890-1920,” in Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century, ed. Johannes Paulmann (London: Oxford University Press, 2016). 5 Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century,” 255; Davide Rodogno, Shalmoa Gauthier, and Francesca Piana, “The League of Nations Mission in Western Thrace: Relief and Rehabilitation Operations (1922-1924),” in Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century, ed. Johannes Paulmann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 147–69; Droux, “Life during Wartime: The Save the Children International Union and the Dilemmas of Warfare Relief, 1919-1947.”

hindering their efforts in the international sphere. By justifying their concerns in ‘scientific’ terms, they hoped to facilitate acceptance among state representatives at the League and at home.”6

The emphasis on technical support also shaped interwar diplomacy. According to Bruno

Cabanes, the “world of diplomats, with its own order of precedence, rhetoric, and rituals, gradually gave way to a world of experts: economists, legal scholars, sociologists, and demographers.”7

These experts and scholars aided in the formation of the International Labour Organization (ILO) as an international organization whose aim was to advance social justice and protections; the experts and technical commissioners conducted investigations, centralized information, directly or indirectly exerted pressure on member states, all while continuing to depend on national bureaus in an effort to build international social policies.8 In turn, the ILO collaborated with the League of

Nations and the experts and scholars associated with it to publish on international law and social problems.9 International organizations and the experts associated with them, then, provided the framework and mechanisms that governments as well as national and local relief organizations would use when war erupted again in 1939.

The predominant attitude towards the practice and approach to humanitarian action in 1939, described by contemporaries and in modern scholarship alike as “planning-mindedness,” emphasized the desire to avoid the chaos and distress experienced during the First World War by learning from those mistakes and applying them in the field.10 Over the last ten years scholarship has begun to address “planning-mindedness” and does so from a variety of perspectives while emphasizing the ways in which the Allied governments, national organizations, voluntary

6 Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century,” 226. 7 Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924, 106–7. 8 Cabanes, 6, 117. 9 Cabanes, 6. 10 Francesca M. Wilson, “Advice to Relief Workers: Based on Personal Experience in the Field,” John Murray and Friends Relief Service, 1947.

organizations, and military planners utilized developments and mechanisms created by interwar organizations and tanks to create a “plan” that would ensure that efforts for postwar relief were efficient and effective.11 Although the scholarship is still limited and largely focuses on planning related to emergency relief, the literature highlights the primary concerns expressed by agents involved in planning that included the control of contagion and disease, the coordination of relief organizations and distribution of material aid by overseeing national and international bodies, as well as how to utilize relief work for the purpose of international collaboration in the reconstruction of Europe.12

Johannes-Dieter Steinert examines “planning-mindedness” from the perspective of small

British voluntary relief organizations and traces how they worked within the British Occupied

Zone in Germany in the postwar years. The aim of the organizations had been to coordinate their efforts under the umbrella of the Council of British Societies for Relief Abroad (COBSRA), which represented at a national level a recognition that lessons from the mistakes of relief in the First

World War needed to be recognized and institutionalized. Steinert argues the British pursuit of a

“far-sighted policy of advance planning” during wartime, including the support of COBRSA and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) as coordinating bodies,

11 Steinert, “British Humanitarian Assistance: Wartime Planning and Postwar Realities”; Hilary Footitt and Simona Tobia, WarTalk: Foreign Languages and the British War Effort in Europe, 1940-47 (New York and Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillian, 2013); Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century”; Shephard, “‘Becoming Planning Minded’: The Theory and Practice of Relief 1940-1945”; Reinisch, “Introduction: Relief in the Aftermath of War”; Kurt Jürgensen, “British Occupation Policy after 1945 and the Problem of ‘Re-Educating Germany,’” History 68, no. 223 (1983): 225–44; Matthew Frank, “Working for the Germans: British Voluntary Societies and the German Refugee Crisis, 1945-50,” Historical Research 82, no. 215 (2009); Sharif Gemie et al., Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War 1936-48 (New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012); Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 12 Reinisch, “Introduction: Relief in the Aftermath of War”; Jessica Reinisch, “‘We Shall Rebuild Anew a Powerful Nation’: UNRRA, Internationalism and National Reconstruction in Poland,” Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 3 (2008): 451–76; Shephard, “‘Becoming Planning Minded’: The Theory and Practice of Relief 1940-1945”; Steinert, “British Humanitarian Assistance: Wartime Planning and Postwar Realities.”

enabled British voluntary organizations to provide relief more rapidly than the Americans.13 A pitfall to Steinert’s work, although one that could not have necessarily been addressed in the space of an article, is the brevity in which Steinert treats preparations and training by the voluntary organizations. He highlights how the organizations trained volunteers for medical relief, provided information on the target countries, emphasized the learning of European languages, how to establish and manage large numbers of people in refugee camps, as well as the psychological condition of people who experienced wartime trauma. Though useful for setting the groundwork, this offers little nuance into the individual ethos, traditions, expectations, or approaches among the smaller British voluntary relief organizations.

To contemporaries, the UNRRA represented a transition towards a more professionalized and institutionalized approach to humanitarian aid. The UNRRA, having been created as an international and intergovernmental coordinator for postwar relief, prided itself for employing professional relief workers. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to explore the problems associated with the UNRRA’s organization ethos. Sharif Gemie, Fiona Reid, and Laure Humbert argue the UNRRA, as a new professionalized organization, incorporated a highly bureaucratic approach to aid that on one hand reflected the approaches by organizations such as the International

Committee of the Red Cross, yet on the other hand, in practice only complicated reporting regarding on-going relief and rehabilitation programs and could not generate similar documentation that echoed those of the ICRC.14

In her study on refugees, Liisa Malkki argues that the post-1945 period witnessed the development of standardized and globalized methods of mass displacement management. Malkki writes:

13 Steinert, “British Humanitarian Assistance: Wartime Planning and Postwar Realities,” 434–35. 14 Gemie et al., Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War 1936-48, 146–47.

The refugee camp was a vital device of power: The spatial concentration and ordering of people that it enabled, as well as the administrative and bureaucratic processes it facilitated within its boundaries, had far-reaching consequences. The segregation of nationalities; the orderly organization of repatriation or third-country resettlement; medical and hygienic programs and quarantining; ‘perpetual screening’ […] and the accumulation of documentation on the inhabitants of the camps; the control of movement and black- marketing; law enforcement and public discipline; and schooling and rehabilitation were some of the operations that the spatial concentration and order of people enabled or facilitated.15

That the “refugee” could be a “knowable, namable figure” and “object of social-scientific knowledge,” she argues, enabled the rise of a “whole class of people” that included administrators, doctors, bureaucratic functionaries, and therapists.16

These attitudes and approaches had been a continuation of the policies and practices established during the interwar and wartime years by, what Ben Shepard has termed, “rhetorical planners” whose aim had been to develop conceptual frameworks and bureaucratic labels regarding refugee populations. Shephard points out that in the early 1940s “rhetorical planners”— for example, the Fabian Society and the doctors and relief workers with first-hand experience in aid during and after the Great War—argued postwar Europe would need relief as well as rehabilitation and began sketching an international organization that would address the needs, conditions, and the “‘breakdown of the of the laissez faire and nationalist systems.’” Rhetorical planners played a vital role in popularizing the concept of “displaced person” and in inspiring relief workers to action.17 Although smaller relief organizations, like the FAU and FRS, utilized those rhetorical frameworks and categories, they remained critical and expressed frustration regarding the bureaucratic and technocratic nature of “The Powers that Be.” The postwar insistence that

15 Liisa H. Malkki, “Refugees and Exile: From ‘Refugee Studies’ to the National Order of Things,” Annual Review of Anthropology 24, no. 1 (October 1, 1995): 498, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.002431. 16 Malkki, 498. 17 Shephard, “‘Becoming Planning Minded’: The Theory and Practice of Relief 1940-1945,” 408.

camps segregate according to nationality, and the impersonal—cold—approach taken by UNRRA workers towards DPs and refugees particularly frustrated the FAU and FRS.18

Scholarship focused on wartime planning does not suggest that planning led to successful humanitarian action in Europe, but instead that the agents involved in planning postwar relief activities recognized the changing nature of warfare and its impact on soldiers and civilians, utilized and continued to establish international networks for information and data gathering, and understood their work as having long-term benefits in the development of efficient and effective humanitarian aid. What is neglected, however, are the continuities of traditions and approaches taken by faith-based organizations as they prepared for and integrated themselves into postwar relief. Although those organizations, such as the FAU and FRS, benefitted from the developments made by international organizations, wartime planners, and field experts, the foundation and conceptualization of humanitarianism that the Quakers developed over the course of the nineteenth century endured. Indeed, the core principles continued to guide volunteers work and, in some ways, further solidified in the face of chaos, destruction, and suffering caused by the war machine during and after the Second World War.

When the Second World War came to an end in May 1945, international, national, and voluntary organizations undertook programs of relief and rehabilitation across Europe. Scholars have scrutinized and assessed these two components of postwar humanitarianism, “relief” and

“rehabilitation,” to distinguish the actions of humanitarian aid with the former considered material and physical relief—the provision of foodstuff, clothing, housing, and medical assistance—to

18 Jennifer Carson, “The Friends Relief Service - Faith into Action: Humanitarian Assistance to Displaced Persons Camps in Germany, 1945-1948” (University of Manchester, 2009), 17, 116–27, 162–74; Gemie et al., Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War 1936-48, 174–75; Fiona Reid and Sharif Gemie, “The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People in Europe After the Second World War, 1945-48,” Quaker Studies 17, no. 2 (2013): 236–38.

populations in distress whereas the latter encompassed programs aimed at the social, moral, political, and economic rehabilitation of suffering populations.19 Matthew Frank examines the role of British voluntary relief organizations active in the relief and rehabilitation of German populations and illustrates how the “spirit”—forgiveness and reconciliation, Christian charity and brotherhood—expressed and practiced by smaller British voluntary relief organizations, rather than the material or tangible results of it, represented the chief value of postwar aid for both the volunteers in Germany and observers in Britain.20 The goal of the British voluntary organizations had been to help Germans help themselves, which Frank identifies as “indirect welfare.” He suggests direct welfare was the, “forms of material assistance such as dispensing hot coffee and cocoa to refugees crossing at a border post or finding light bulbs for the vast and cavernous

‘bunkers’ (former air raid-shelters) in which many refugees lived in the large cities.”21 In contrast, indirect welfare aligns with the nineteenth century notion of self-help in so far as relief teams aimed to, “help Germans to help themselves by giving support and assistance to local welfare organizations,” which he characterizes as more impersonal since relief workers acted more as liaisons rather than working directly with refugees.22 The later form of humanitarian work was harder for volunteers to trace in the day-to-day among German natives and refugee populations, which is where Frank argues the “spirit” played a crucial role. Frank argues the willingness and motivation among many of the smaller voluntary organizations to aid Germans can be traced to a

19 “Working for the Germans: British Voluntary Societies and the German Refugee Crisis, 1945-50,” 164; Tara Zahra, “Lost Children: Displacement, Family, and Nation in Postwar Europe,” The Journal of Modern History, European Childhood in the Twentieth Century, 81, no. 1 (2009): 47; Ben Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War (New York: Anchor Books, 2010), 51; G. Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 65–66; Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century,” 215; Rodogno, Gauthier, and Piana, “The League of Nations Mission in Western Thrace: Relief and Rehabilitation Operations (1922-1924),” 147. 20 Frank, “Working for the Germans: British Voluntary Societies and the German Refugee Crisis, 1945-50,” 159. 21 Frank, 164. 22 Frank, 164.

sense of Christian “mission” for “saving Europe” among individual relief worker and teams as well as the ethos and mandate of impartiality of the voluntary organizations.23 What needs further assessment, then, are the ways in which the organizations established and fostered the “spirit” among volunteers, the extent to which the “spirit” influenced or played a role in the teams that worked with and among DP populations in Germany, and whether or not those organizations sought to impart those world views or beliefs on the populations—DP or German—receiving aid.

In his work on DPs, UNRRA, and post-1945 humanitarianism, Daniel Cohen further develops Malcolm Proudfoot’s 1957 work, European Refugees: 1939-1952, by highlighting the success of the UNRRA in its efforts at rehabilitation rather than those aimed at physical or material relief.24 He argues that the creation UNRRA marked the end of the “charitable phase” of modern humanitarianism characterized by, “one-sided provision of emergency material assistance” and the beginning of an aggressive promotion of “active” welfare that, “aimed at stimulating self-help among recipients of care.”25 The “active” welfare tasks of the UNRRA extended beyond the provision of food and clothes to address and promote the development of child welfare, occupational therapy, education, and employment opportunities, which can largely be understood as “rehabilitation.”26 This, he argues, reflected a “professional transformation” that transcended charity and philanthropy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.27 Yet, what this work neglects is the presence and role of smaller voluntary organizations and their on-the-ground actions among DPs, refugees, and German populations prior to the arrival of UNRRA teams to Europe

23 Frank, 169–70. 24 Malcolm J. Proudfoot, European Refugees: 1939-52: A Study in Forced Population Movement (Northwestern University Press, 1956), 414; G. Daniel Cohen, “Between Relief and Politics: Refugee Humanitarianism in Occupied Germany 1945-1946,” Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 3 (2008): 438–39; Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order, 65–66. 25 Cohen, “Between Relief and Politics: Refugee Humanitarianism in Occupied Germany 1945-1946,” 438. 26 Cohen, 439; Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order, 65–66. 27 Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order, 438, 449.

and even after the International Refugee Organization (IRO) took over for the UNRRA in 1947.28

To be sure, “rehabilitation” and welfare work in Europe after the war was a significant element of postwar work; yet by positioning the UNRRA as the leader of “active” welfare in post-1945

European relief efforts, Cohen also overlooks the continuities of programs aimed at self-help that began over the course of the nineteenth century and extended into the early and mid-twentieth centuries by smaller voluntary organizations, particularly the FWVRC that later collaborated with the FAU to form the FRS.

To build on existing and contribute new perspectives to scholarship on humanitarianism, this study will highlight the continuities and ruptures in the approaches to and practices of humanitarian aid by small British faith-based voluntary relief organizations that developed over the course of the nineteenth century, during the Great War, and re-emerged in 1939 to address the suffering of European populations. By tracing the Quaker traditions that shaped the work of the

FAU and FRS—particularly the notions of promoting self-help, impartiality, democratic structures, and internationalism—as they delivered relief and fostered the rebuilding of communities, this work demonstrates how small voluntary organizations integrated their values into the new relief structures of planning-mindedness, professionalization and international collaboration that also characterized the larger relief organizations. Moreover, this work will illustrate as well as refine the influence of “planning-mindedness”—the departure from a laissez-faire approach to humanitarian aid—that began after the First World War and shaped the ways in which humanitarian aid was approached during and after the Second World War by the Allied governments, international relief organizations, and smaller voluntary relief organizations.

28 Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century,” 219.

By taking a transnational approach that examines the training of relief workers in one geographical location during war and the implementation of learned skills in a different geographical location in a postwar period, this dissertation sheds light on the challenges and benefits of “planning-mindedness” as well as the relationship between the perceptions, assumptions and reality of humanitarian crises in organizational relief work. Finally, this comprehensive and careful analysis of training courses and programs offers nuance to scholarship concerned with the character of postwar humanitarian aid by providing context for on-the-ground decision-making regarding relief and rehabilitation programs made by individual members and teams associated with smaller voluntary organizations rather than those made by military governments or international organizations which may or may not have had direct experience and contact with receiving populations. Rather than focusing on question of successes or failures of postwar humanitarian aid, this work examines the factors that influenced and shaped the ways in which relief volunteers developed relief and rehabilitation programs.

Quakerism

Quakerism shaped the principles and organizational ethos of the FAU and FRS and for this reason an overview of the Quaker movement and its commitment to humanitarian service is useful.

The Religious Society of Friends emerged in the seventeenth century during the turmoil of the

English Civil War and Protestant Reformation. The Quaker movement believed that the Church of

England had not followed through with a true break from the Roman Catholic Church. George

Fox, founder of Quakerism, directed followers towards a belief in the “indwelling Spirit of Christ” in everyone equally, or the “Inner Light,” rather than a reliance on written scripture, sacramental

symbolism, or outward and formal religion.29 C.H. Mike Yarrow points out that, in an act of defiance or rebellion against traditional forms of religious practice, Quakers held “meetings” rather than “church.” A “Meeting for Worship” emerged as a period of silent reflection where each person could pray, meditate, or listen to the Light of God within them and speak only when moved by a message or experience; the “Monthly Meeting” was a meeting among members to discuss and conduct business and administrative matters.30 During a Meeting for Worship, a friend might present a concern to the group and ask if he or she were following the right path; the “concern” implied a, “religiously inspired impulse to put God’s love into action in some concrete situation.”31

Friends, therefore, believed that their community was able to understand God’s will and felt empowered to act on it.

Quakers also developed a series of specific “testimonies” or practices that expressed in words and deeds the principles of and beliefs within the community that center on integrity, equality, simplicity, peace, and justice. 32 The peace testimony emerged as a foundational component of Quakerism during the imprisonment of Fox in 1650. Fox had the opportunity for release if he joined the army. He refused, claiming that he did not fight with outward weapons but spiritual ones. A decade later, the Friends issued a public expression of their testimony for peace in A Declaration from the Harmless and Innocent People of God called Quakers, against all

29 Thomas C. Kennedy, “The Quaker Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern British Peace Movement, 1895- 1920,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 16, no. 3 (1984): 245; John Punshon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers (London: Quaker Home Service, 1984), 37; Robert O. Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960), 3–4; C.H. Mike Yarrow, Quaker Experience in International Conciliation (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978), 2. 30 “Quakers & Slavery: Glossary” (Bryn Mawr College), accessed August 15, 2017, http://trilogy.haverford.edu/speccoll/quakersandslavery/resources/glossary.php; Yarrow, Quaker Experience in International Conciliation, 5–6; Pink Dandelion, Quakers: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 133; Carson, “The Friends Relief Service - Faith into Action: Humanitarian Assistance to Displaced Persons Camps in Germany, 1945-1948,” 27. 31 Yarrow, Quaker Experience in International Conciliation, 7. 32 Yarrow, Quaker Experience in International Conciliation, 5; See also: Pink Dandelion, Quakers: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 13–14.

Sedition, Plotters and Fighters in the World: for removing the Ground of Jealousy and Suspicion from Magistrates and People concerning Wars and Fighting. The declaration affirmed Quaker principles of peace, renunciation of war and the carnal use of weapons as directed not by any scriptural text, but by the Spirit of Christ and the Inner Light. Over time, Quakers dedicated themselves to “witness”—record crimes and suffering for public awareness—that led to their engagement in reform movements as well as relief work.33

Not unlike other Protestant groups, Quakers were influenced by the Evangelical Movement.

The Evangelical Movement began in the 1730s to reform the Anglican Church from within and reignite Christian spirit during a time when the Enlightenment emphasized rationalism and moderation in society. In his work, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, David W. Bebbington outlines four qualities of Evangelical religion: conversionism, that lives should be transformed; activism, the practice which promotes change in society;

Biblicism, the emphasis on the biblical text; and crucicentrism, “a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.”34 Several Friends initiated a shift towards evangelical trends and a belief that guidance from God came from scriptural authority and not from the previously prescribed Quaker belief in the Inner Light. The British Quakers who challenged the Quaker doctrine and quietism, such as the Beaconites, posited the Inner Light was both “imaginary” and “delusional.”35 Those who sought to introduce Evangelicalism into the Quaker denomination did so because they believed the faith had deficiencies, namely the conservative temper of Quietism and sectarianism.36 The Evangelical impulse of spreading the faith through evangelism and travelling

33 Carson, “The Friends Relief Service - Faith into Action: Humanitarian Assistance to Displaced Persons Camps in Germany, 1945-1948,” 28. 34 David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London and New York: Taylor & Francis, 2005), 16. 35 Quakers: A Very Short Introduction, 48. 36 Punshon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers, 166.

ministries allowed for Quakerism to take hold throughout Britain and the empire with little to no difficulty.

Beginning in 1888, however, a number of young British Quakers born in the 1850s and

1860s began to turn away from the evangelical and scripturally centered belief structure towards one of “sounder basis.”37 Historian Thomas C. Kennedy refers to the end of the nineteenth century as an “intellectual revolt” due to the relinquishing of the evangelical creed, rejection of the

Richmond Declaration of Faith, and most significantly, a revival of the peace testimony. He writes,

“Concentration on this mystical but egalitarian principle allowed Friends to eschew biblical literalism and embrace scientific and social concepts.”38 To be sure, the Quaker faith had in the

1860s released members from several of the strict principles and practices including the peculiarities of speech, dress, and even lifted the ban on marrying-out. Yet, those changes did not have a significant impact on membership numbers. According to estimates, Quaker membership declined from 60,000 in 1680 to 16,227 in 1840. Thus, the call for a reinvigoration of the faith.

Scholars have termed the reform and transition towards liberal Quakerism in the late nineteenth century, the “Quaker Renaissance.”39 For those Quakers interested in reinvigorating the

Quaker faith, there were two essential components to the process: first, was a return of the Inner

Light to its central position and placing biblical texts in subordination to it; and second, a vibrant ministry educated in both Quaker principles and modern thought, as exemplified in the opening of

Woodbrooke Quaker Study Center. 40 Historically, Quakers placed intense significance on

37 Kennedy, “The Quaker Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern British Peace Movement, 1895-1920,” 243. 38 Kennedy, 245. 39 Punshon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers, 221; Kennedy, “The Quaker Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern British Peace Movement, 1895-1920”; Thomas C. Kennedy, “Early Friends and the Renewal of British Quakerism, 1890-1920,” Quaker History 93, no. 1 (2004): 80–95; Rebecca Gill, “‘The Rational Administration of Compassion’: The Origins of British Relief in War,” Le Mouvement Social 227 (2009): 9–26; Mark Freeman, “Muscular Quakerism? The Society of Friends and Youth Organisations in Britain, c.1900-1950,” English Historical Review CXXV, no. 514 (2010): 642–69. 40 Kennedy, “Early Friends and the Renewal of British Quakerism, 1890-1920,” 82.

education, but only by in the late nineteenth century education became a key component in securing a strong ministry and essential in ensuring the younger generations of Friends had both religious and secular frameworks to succeed in modern society.41 By returning to the ideals of early

Quakerism, particularly the emphasis on the Inner Light and brotherhood of all mankind, liberal

Friends revived the peace testimony as a central component to their practice and Friends became increasingly more active in their participation in discussions and movements focused on anti-war, arbitration, and war relief efforts.

Quaker War Relief

Scholarship on the war relief efforts of the FAU and FRS during and after the Second

World War is scant, however, recent works argue the aid provided by the two organizations centered on three key aspects. 42 First, the democratic approach that insisted on the participation of the receiving population and cooperation with local organizations and authorities as a means to encourage self-help. Second, that following attention to material relief, the primary aim of the organizations was rooted in spiritual rehabilitation and reconciliation. Finally, that aid would be provided impartially to all populations suffering as a result of the war. These three aspects did not emerge in 1939 or over the course of action during and after the Second World War, but instead represent the culmination of Quaker war relief experience and tradition.

41 Kennedy, “The Quaker Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern British Peace Movement, 1895-1920”; Punshon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers. 42 A. Telga Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946 (London: Headley Brothers, 1947), 422–40; Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 223–75; Roger Wilson, Authority, Leadership, and Concern: A Study in Motive and Administration in Quaker Relief Work (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1949); Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy; Yarrow, Quaker Experience in International Conciliation; Reid and Gemie, “The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People in Europe After the Second World War, 1945-48”; Carson, “The Friends Relief Service - Faith into Action: Humanitarian Assistance to Displaced Persons Camps in Germany, 1945-1948”; Lyn Smith, Pacifists in Action (York, England: Sessions Book Trust, 1998); Lyn Smith, “Quakers in Uniform: The Friends Ambulance Unit,” in Challenge to Mars: Essays on Pacifism from 1918 to 1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).

During the Napoleonic Wars, Quakers coordinated with other religious groups, merchants, bankers, and abolitionists to assist Europeans displaced and distressed by the devastation of war.

Distinguished by their broad geographical scope, the mobilization of mass armies, and the infusion of revolutionary and national ideologies, scholars recognize the Napoleonic Wars today as the first

“total war.” European populations were most affected by the intersection of destruction imposed by the Grand Armée and economic turmoil generated by the 1806 Continental Blockade. Karen

Hagemann and others highlight the brutalization of war through various eyewitness reports that speak to the “scorched earth” policy implemented by Napoleon once units moved out of the areas; destruction of land and resources, coupled with the looting and plundering that left local populations both starving, ill and in dire need of relief.43

In response to the needs of populations in German Central Europe, British Quakers helped establish the ecumenical organization called the Committee for Relieving the Distressed

Inhabitants of Germany, which operated from 1805 to 1807 and from 1814 to 1816. Horrific reports from the Battle of Austerlitz and the German Wars of Liberation, inspired this Committee that Norbert Götz argues has been understudied, yet set important precedents for transnational humanitarian aid that linked various polities in Britain and on the continent.44 The Committee, comprised of London bankers and merchants from various religious and social backgrounds, raised nearly £50,000 by 1807 and in 1814 secured a parliamentary grant of £100,000 for the committee to allocate to the needy.45 Greenwood and Götz emphasize that an important feature to the work

43 Alan Forrest, Karen Hagemann, and Jane Rendall, eds., Soldiers, Citizens, and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the French Wars 1790-1820 (London, 2008). 44 Norbert Götz, “Rationales of Humanitarianism: The Case of British Relief to Germany, 1805–1815*,” Journal of Modern European History 12, no. 2 (2014): 186–99, https://doi.org/10.17104/1611-8944_2014_2_186; Norbert Götz, “The Good Plumpuddings’ Belief: British Voluntary Aid to Sweden During the Napoleonic Wars,” The International History Review 37, no. 3 (May 27, 2015): 519–39, https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2014.918559. 45 Punshon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers, 184; John Ormerod Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief (York, England: William Sessions Limited, 1975), 12.

of the Committee for Relieving the Distressed Inhabitants of Germany and Other Parts of the

Continent was its impartial and needs-based distribution of funds.46 Impartiality later became a foundational tenant of humanitarian aid in the twentieth century, yet the insistence of Quakers for impartial relief beginning in the early nineteenth century underscores the significance of the

Quaker belief of “brotherhood of all mankind” and the Inner Light, and how that applied to their war relief practices.

Also significant in the relief work of the Committee during the Napoleonic Wars was the support of transnational networks for the effective and impartial distribution of funds. German pastors, merchants, civic organizations and women’s associations partnered with the Committee by submitting reports of the wartime conditions in German Central Europe, distributing funds from

England to the needy, and relaying statements to subscription holders and members detailing how and where their monies were utilized.47 Götz argues that the networks of German immigrants and local organizations and members and contributors participating in the Committee’s war relief represented a “blurring of the categories ‘us’ and ‘them.’” The reliance on and incorporation of local authorities into the relief scheme also reflects the principles of democratic relief that underscores the belief that successful relief depends on the input of those receiving aid. The work of Quakers in relief committees during the Napoleonic Wars certainly set a precedent for democratic relief, an approach that would later emerge during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and 1871.

In 1870, news of the Franco-Prussia War and its impact on those living in or near the battle areas was related back to London by Friends travelling on holiday in France and the German states.

46 Götz, “Rationales of Humanitarianism,” 20; Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 13. 47 Katherine Aaslestad, “Cities and War: Modern Military Urbanism in Hamburg and Leipzig during the Napoleonic Era,” German History 35, no. 3 (2017): 381–402.

Those reports, printed in The Friend and The British Friend, as well as in the Daily News, urged for a special fund to be created for those suffering on the continent. On October 7, 1870 Henry

Allen and John Hodgkin introduced the subject of civilians in need at the Meeting of Sufferings; the result was the creation of a Friends War Victims Fund that appealed for contributions and to find individuals willing to assume the task of investigating the needs of populations and oversee the distribution of funds or materials.48

The Friends War Victims Relief Fund, which would become called the Friends War

Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC), was the first official body of the Society of Friends dedicated to war relief. The FWVRC, comprised of sixty people, met regularly to discuss the actions of forty field workers or “Commissioners” who were unpaid volunteers. The

Commissioners were Quaker and non-Quaker, men and women, and came from throughout

Europe.49 Greenwood argues that the integration of non-Quakers and women as field workers into the FWVRC was based on the Meeting for Suffering’s decision to find the most competent individuals for the job.50 It was during this period of relief that the Quaker red and black star, a symbol of the organization, was first adopted and used by FWVRC commissioners in the field; the symbol identified the volunteers of the organization, enabling them to secure access to the field from military authorities, but also to distinguish their efforts from other organizations such as those affiliated with the Red Cross.

Scholars situate the work of the FWVRC during the Franco-Prussian Wars into a larger and ever-growing humanitarian movement that included the creation of the “International Red

48 William K. Sessions, The Chose the Star, 2nd ed. (York, England: Sessions Book Trust, 1991), 1–2. 49 Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 55. 50 Greenwood, 54–57.

Cross” beginning in 1863.51 In contrast to other relief societies, such as the National Society for

Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War that later became the British Red Cross, whose main concern were soldiers and were more often than not “accommodating” to the needs of the increasingly

“militarized state,” the FWVRC focused on civilian relief only.52 Peter Brock and Rebecca Gill argue that the work of the FWVRC among civilians during the Franco-Prussian Wars reflected the

Quaker belief in and the practice of peace testimony and a drive to foster international goodwill.53

Rebecca Gill has termed the ethos of humanitarianism during the Franco-Prussian Wars

“rational compassion,” which was characterized by the vocation of humanitarianism and the expert, democratic relief, and impartial evaluation of need.54 For example, following the siege on Paris in

1871, FWVRC Commissioners surveyed sixty surrounding villages, connected with mayors and local leaders, and left a questionnaire that included a series of questions developed in relief work in Great Britain that aided in determining the needs of the respective area and population.55

Following the survey, a committee of locals was established; it comprised Bishops, local leaders, and the president of the Chamber of Commerce, the Société de secours aux paysans, which oversaw the distribution of goods and served as a model for other areas.56

Finally, if the FWVRC utilized new methods from the field of social sciences, the commissioners still incorporated the contemporary belief of “self-help” into their approach in relief work.57 Bertrand Harris argues that self-help and mutual aid served as the “third arm” of the

51 Greenwood, 47–48; Punshon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers, 185–86; Sessions, The Chose the Star, 1–2; Gill, “‘The Rational Administration of Compassion’: The Origins of British Relief in War,” 363. 52 Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism, 81; Gill, “‘The Rational Administration of Compassion’: The Origins of British Relief in War.” 53 Gill, “‘The Rational Administration of Compassion’: The Origins of British Relief in War,” 14; Peter Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 363. 54 Gill, “‘The Rational Administration of Compassion’: The Origins of British Relief in War,” 10. 55 Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 65. 56 Greenwood, 66. 57 Gill, “‘The Rational Administration of Compassion’: The Origins of British Relief in War,” 23; Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 76.

Victorian welfare state. Harris argues public officials and “other opinion-formers” believed the aim of social policy should be the encouragement of individuals and families to increase their own efforts at providing for themselves[.]58 Barbara Harrell-Bond argues in her study of assistance to refugees that anti-participatory relief or relief imposed from outside “not only usurps the ideas of the host, suppresses the creative energy of the refugee who could have been helped to help himself, but provokes response which are hostile and unproductive for all concerned.”59 The use of surveys by the FWVRC included the amount of foodstuffs and supplies necessary for aid to be distributed, but also incorporated assessments of local resources and land to be cultivated for farming, thus ensuring “long-term” benefits of assistance once relief workers returned home. This ensured that the populations receiving aid would not become dependent on or “pauperised” by the relief, but instead that over time they would become “self-sufficient” and self-sustaining, reflecting the core

Quaker principle of self-help.

The FWVRC concluded relief efforts in Europe in 1875 and would only reemerge in 1914 with the start of the Great War. As in the past, the FWVRC relied on a democratic approach, integrated the concept of “self-help,” and continued the use of surveys to develop relief schemes for European civilians.60 The FWVRC provided assistance to doctors and nurses in hospitals throughout France, worked in orphanages and among Belgian refugees in camps in the Netherlands, with refugees in Serbia, and in famine relief in Russia.61

58 Harris identifies the “first arm” as the statutory provision in the form of the Poor Law and the “second arm” as voluntary provision represented by private charity. Bernard Harris, The Origins of the British Welfare State: Society, State and Social Welfare in England and Wales, 1800-1945 (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2004). 59 Barbara E. Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 3. 60 Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief; Sian Lliwen Roberts, “Place, Life Histories and the Politics of Relief: Episodes in the Life of Francesca Wilson, Humanitarian Educator Activist” (University of Birmingham, 2010), University of Birmingham Research Archive (e-theses repository); Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee. 61 Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief; Francesca M. Wilson, In the Margins of Chaos: Recollections of Relief Work in and Between Three Wars (New York, NY: The Macmillian Company, 1945);

The FWVRC was not, however, the only Quaker-led voluntary relief organization to provide aid during the war. The FAU emerged in 1914 as a medical and ambulance relief unit that sought to provide aid to both soldier and civilian populations suffering as a result of the war.

Greenwood highlights four significant differences between the two organizations. First, unlike the

FWVRC, the FAU was not officially affiliated with the Society of Friends. The FAU sought to work alongside military bodies, even as it maintained a pacifist position to war, and the Society of

Friends could not support an organization that had such close proximity to the military system. In his work on pacifism in Britain during the two world wars, Martin Ceadel argues:

To a strict absolutist [pacifist] these units could be regarded as in practice helping the war to continue, and a number of members, particularly of the former […] began to have doubts on this score. […] But the fact that Quakers could not ignore evidence that the Ambulance Unit was benefiting the military authorities by patching up wounded soldiers and thereby expediting their return to active service, or that their liberal principles were offended by conscription[.]62

Ceadel points out that, despite this critical position, attention should be directed to the fact that with the increased politicization of pacifism related to the rise of conscription in Britain, men who joined the FAU volunteered for relief work as an alternative to traditional military service.

The sex of the volunteers represented another crucial difference between the two organizations. The FAU was created as a predominantly male relief unit whereas the FWVRC not only continued the tradition of women commissioners established during the Franco-Prussian War, but many of the FWVRC leaders in overseas relief were women. Third, as Greenwood illustrates, the ethos of the two organizations differed; the tone of the FAU was “practical,” whereas the

FWVRC had a “strong Utopian strain which grew stronger as the war went on; they dreamed of

Roberts, “Place, Life Histories and the Politics of Relief: Episodes in the Life of Francesca Wilson, Humanitarian Educator Activist.” 62 Martin Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, 1914-1945: The Defining of a Faith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 42.

social change and the part they might play in it.”63 Not surprising, the final point of difference between the two organization was their length of service, as the FWVRC continued service into the interwar years whereas the FAU wound up relief activities at the close of the war. The FWVRC thus had more opportunities in the interwar period to provide impartial aid to all suffering populations including Germans and to work on long-term relief programs aimed at reconciliation.

Between 1918 and 1924, the FWVRC partnered with American Friends and focused their efforts on famine relief in Russia, Poland, Germany, and Austria. British Quakers, first to arrive in Germany in 1919, were joined by the American Friends Service Council (AFSC) which had funding and support from Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration (ARA). In his work,

Quakers and Nazis: Inner Light and Outer Darkness, Hans A. Schmitt argues that one of the major programs developed and implemented by the Quakers in the immediate post-1919 period in

Germany were the “Quaker Feedings” (Quäkerspeisungen) that “touched the lives and empty stomach of hundreds of thousands of young Germans.”64 The Quakers worked alongside local

German school teachers, principals, and community volunteers to provide daily meals to 630,000 mothers and children between February 1920 and the summer of that year. At the height of the program Quakers provided food to one million individuals between the ages of six and fourteen in

1,640 feeding centers.65

Despite the success of the Quaker feedings sponsored and funded by the ARA, scholars have pointed out that the program had “moral issues” for using humanitarian aid as a political

63 Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 194–95. 64 Hans A. Schmitt, Quakers and Nazis: Inner Light in Outer Darkness (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 16. 65 Schmitt, 16.

project.66 Cabanes argues the goals of Americans in the ARA had been economic by participating in the rebuilding of Central Europe as well as political by limiting the spread of Communism.67

Greenwood suggests that the differences in outlook and approach to relief work prompted British

Quakers to pursue their own relief activities in Germany. The feeding programs by the ARA did not include students, thus British Quakers initiated separate programs geared toward the over

100,000 students in German universities and technical institutes. In May 1920, the British Quakers opened a dining hall (Speisehalle) in Berlin and by 1921 the program extended to nearly every university in Germany.68 The humanitarian aid efforts and programs conducted by the British

Quakers during the interwar years underscored their commitment to providing impartial aid, democratic structures, and service to suffering populations across Europe.

Methodology and Structure

To address the shortcomings of as well as build upon previous scholarship, this transnational case study is anchored in empirical archival research in London at the Friends House

Library and Imperial War Museum in the United Kingdom, and at the University of Cologne library and archives, the Ecclesiastical Archive Centre in Berlin, the Sandbostel Stalag XB

Memorial in Sandbostel, and the Bergen-Belsen Memorial in Celle in Germany. Although institutional records and documents form the foundation of this study, I have also integrated personal testimonies and ego-documents from relief workers; these materials offer insight into how volunteers to the FAU and FRS responded to their respective training programs and their

66 Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century,” 225; Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924, 194–95, 242; Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 222–23. 67 Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924, 242. 68 Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 223–24.

perceptions of humanitarian work in the British Occupation Zone during the immediate postwar years.

This project is organized chronologically in order to assess how the organizations developed over the period of 1939 to 1948 and thus is structured into three parts. The first two chapters comprise Part One and are an overview of the creation of training programs at Manor

Farm and Mount Waltham by the FAU and FRS, respectively. Part Two has five chapters: chapter four examines first aid and home nursing training; chapter five builds on its predecessor by assessing how the organizations prepared volunteers to identify, treat, and prevent infectious diseases; chapter six explores the development of ambulance and transport service training; and chapters seven and eight turn to training lessons and lectures on the “refugee problem” facing postwar Europe and how teams could approach reconciliation work among European populations.

Part Three is comprised of three chapters and is structured on the “stages of relief.” Chapter nine begins with an overview of the conditions in Germany at the close of the war, then focuses on the first and second stages of relief that took place in the months leading up to the end of the war, the formation of twenty-four hour transit camps for DPs and refugees, the aid provided in the former concentration camp Bergen-Belsen and former prisoner of war camp Sandbostel, and finally examines various aspects of the “refugee problem” faced in the British Occupation Zone in 1945.

Chapter ten, on the second and third stages of relief, explores the role of the FAU and FRS in DP camps as they sought to provide material, physical, and spiritual relief and rehabilitation. The concluding chapter centers on the ways in which relief teams throughout the British Occupation

Zone encouraged reconciliation among German populations, in particular their work with German youth and university students within the Zone.

At the end of six years of destructive and devastating warfare, the FAU and FRS volunteers came to Germany with the aim of providing assistance to Europeans on the war-torn continent.

The scale of the war, physical devastation, and population displacement was graver than they could have imagined during their training sessions at Manor Farm and Mount Waltham. Yet, the FAU and FRS teams put into action their instruction and experience in an effort to impartially and democratically address the material, social and even spiritual needs of all those afflicted by the violence of war.

PART ONE: THE FAU AND THE FRS

CHAPTER TWO: REVIVING THE FRIENDS AMBULANCE UNIT

In response to the aftermath of the 1938 Munich Crisis and rising tensions across the

European continent, Britain reinstituted the Military Service Training Act in May 1939 that enabled limited conscription of single men between the ages of twenty and twenty-two. Four months later, Germany invaded Poland to which Britain responded with a declaration of war against the German Third Reich and with the institution of the National Service Act, which called for men aged eighteen to forty to register for the war. Both acts recognized “Conscientious

Objectors” (CO) status, and Local and Appellate Tribunals were once again established for men to provide testimony and witness to their pacifist beliefs and convictions, whether religious or political.69 The Service Acts, in conjunction with recognition of CO status, resulted in an influx of male volunteers into alternative service positions and would continue throughout the war as boys came of age and were called-up for service.

There were approximately 65,000 people that registered for CO status during the Second

World War, of which only about 1,300 were Quakers.70 Rachel Cadbury, who served with the

Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in a Voluntary Aid Detachment in France during the Great War, commented to her husband, Paul Cadbury, that she was concerned about those who were not

Quaker: “‘They’re just as much pacifist, possibly more so than many Quakers, and they’ve nobody

69 “Witness,” as defined by The Religious Society of Friends, is: “To testify to or take action based on religious conviction, often at some personal cost.” “Glossary of Quaker Terms & Concepts,” New York Yearly Meeting, The Religious Society of Friends, accessed April 14, 2016, http://www.nyym.org/?q=glossary; Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the FAU in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 7. 70 Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 274.

behind them.’ […] So, I told Paul, ‘that’s what the FAU’s for; that’s one of its missions.’”71 Paul

Cadbury, having also served with the FAU during the Great War, wrote a letter to The Friend in

August 1939. Published one month later on September 1, 1939 and two days before Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, the letter addressed the revival of the FAU as a means to provide COs with an alternative form of service during the course of the upcoming war. This chapter will examine the re-emergence of the FAU in 1939 and the development of new training programs as the organization sought to better prepare volunteers for war and postwar relief work.

Manor Farm

Shortly after arriving at the decision to revive the FAU, preparations began for the establishment of a training camp to provide volunteers with a basic introduction into emergency relief services. Located on an estate owned by Dame Elizabeth Cadbury in Northfield, Birmingham, the Friends Ambulance training camp, Manor Farm, was geographically ideal for the intensive training the FAU arranged for volunteers. The FAU referred to each six-week training session held at Manor Farm numerically, with the “First Camp” held from September 27 to November 14, 1939 and the “Second Camp” from November 15 to December 31, 1939. According to A. Telga Davies,

Paul Cadbury was “the mainspring” in establishing the camp; he interviewed prospective members, attended tribunals, and collected materials for the camp.72 On September 12, 1939 local Friends and volunteers began organizing Manor Farm by converting the farm into a training camp.

Cadbury aided in setting up the First Camp and officially joined the FAU in 1940. He recalled that

71 Smith, Pacifists in Action, 3. 72 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the FAU in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 9.

although the men “did their training, not quite knowing what to do,” the volunteers developed a six-week course that emphasized essential first-aid, physical fitness, and technical training.73

Manor Farm, in many ways, mirrored the FAU “Jordans” training camp held during the

Great War held in Buckinghamshire. A six-week training course, the focus of training at Jordans included first-aid drill, stretcher-drill, hygiene, field cookery, and emphasized military-style training through route marches and physical fitness. The environment and infrastructure of Manor

Farm facilitated training for both the physical aspects of relief work such as communal, uncomfortable living, route marching and stretcher drill, but also had barn space for lectures, discussions, and practical training. Unlike the tents that housed men training at Jordans during the

Great War, the men at Manor Farm slept in double-deck bunks in barn stables, which accommodated “black-outs” with shutters placed over windows.74 In 1939, the FAU continued such training as the Unit maintained the established tradition of concentrating on the first phase of emergency relief.

Manor Farm had a total of nineteen camps, though the First Camp set a standard for the camps that followed. Each camp had a Commandant, a Quartermaster, and six sections with an appointed leader. Each section rotated through orderly duties that included cooking for the camp, casualty duty that trained the men for emergencies through “call outs,” and maneuvers often late at night or in the early hours of morning. The training program consisted of lectures and drill in first-aid, home nursing, field hygiene and sanitation, and an overview of air raid precaution and advanced military weaponry. The lectures, provided by FAU members, medical professionals, and outside “experts,” complimented hands-on practice, physical training, and simulated emergency

73 Cadbury, Michael H., interview by Lyn Smith, Sound, November 27, 1987, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80009833. 74 “Private Report to Members of the Council of the Ambulance Unit for Friends from the Acting Chairman,” September 25, 1939, MSS 876/FAU/1948/2/2, Friends House Library.

situations. Over time, the FAU established connections with the Royal Army Medical Corps

(RAMC) training center at Redditch to introduce volunteers to up-to-date army procedures and practices.

The FAU believed its role in relief work would mirror the emergency relief and ambulance work delivered by the FAU during the Great War.75 Therefore, Unit members active in relief during the Great War lectured at Manor Farm on their firsthand experiences in relief, as well as on

Unit and Quaker tradition. A diarist from the Fifth Camp wrote on July 8, 1939:

Harold Watts gave us an extraordinarily interesting talk on his memories of the FAU in the last war. The first striking feature of these was the bewildering varieties of duties which we might expect to confront us, ranging through the proper treatment of water and mental patients to venereal disease and life saving at sea. The second was something which I personally had realized till now only dimly, and which even now is hard to define, and that is the tradition of the FAU itself. Yet this is unmistakable once it is perceived. It seems in any case that we have a very high standard of efficiency and personal initiative to live up to.76

The diarist then describes three characteristics of the Unit: first, that the Unit has an “unostentatious way of profiting from experience”; second, an “instinctive generosity in unexpected situations”; and finally, an “extreme spiritual toughness.”77 To be sure, it was important for volunteers to have some insight into the functions of emergency relief to be performed overseas; however, more importantly was the reaffirmation of traditions, pacifist conviction, and organizational ethos that enabled the Unit to be successful in its relief efforts. Following the resuscitation of the organization and the establishment of the First Camp, recruitment of volunteers could begin in earnest.

From the inception in 1914, a point of contention between the FAU and the Society of

Friends had been the insistence of the Unit in working alongside and providing aid to military

75 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the FAU in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 8. 76 “Camp Diaries (Northfield)” (Friends Ambulance Unit, 1941 1939), MSS 876/FAU/1947/1/3, Friends House Library. 77 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).”

bodies, which resulted in an unofficial relationship to the Society of Friends. The precedent in mandate set by the FAU during the Great War continued in 1939 and throughout the war. Thus, when the FAU established Manor Farm as a training camp for volunteers, route marches, drill, and

“call-outs” became an essential component in the preparation for overseas relief. The military- style training had a two-fold purpose: first, to introduce trainees to the formations and movements of the military; and second, to build a sense of unity among the men. Route marches were often conducted and led by the camp Training Officer and varied in length from four to forty-eight miles.

Nev Coates, Fifth Camp, described the route marches with fondness, “Certainly the crowd looked pretty motley, in sports jackets and flannels, with macs and gas masks slung over shoulders.”78

William Spray noted the seriousness with which the drills were taken: “One of the things we were going to have to do was actually move in the same way the military moved, that if we were going to work with them then it was no good to shamble along.”79 David Rudd mentioned the men did not want to be considered or at all feel like a drag on the army group they were attached to. Rudd argued, “If the soldiers could march twenty-five miles then we had to march twenty-five miles.”80 To be sure, the men who volunteered to the Unit began the process with a military tribunal to determine CO status, which was an individualistic endeavor represented by one’s personal testimony. Crucial to becoming a part of the FAU, however, was breaking down the individuality to make a collective whole. Michael Cadbury argued this was an essential part of the process of creating a close-knit community.81

78 RN Coates, “Private Papers of RN Coates,” n.d., 6, 98/10/1, Imperial War Museum. 79 Spray, William Hillah, interview by Lyn Smith, December 3, 1988, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80010329. 80 Rudd, David, interview by Lyn Smith, April 25, 1990, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80011069. 81 Cadbury, Michael H.

For some trainees, the militaristic style challenged their conception and convictions of pacifism. The Seventh Camp diarist emphasizes this:

We hear strange commands and jerk and sweep our bodies into unfamiliar poses. We feel that we are being given unusually detailed explanations of the reasons for the various orders and we are given to understand that ‘a certain amount of trouble’ has been caused in the past by members of the Unit who have confused the regulated locomotion of a body of men with an activity suggestive of militarism. Some of us feel that an interview with these objectors would not be without interest.82

As Davies attests, the relationship between the FAU and the military—from the integration of military-style route marches to working on the field of battle and wearing a uniform while attached to a military body—seemed “illogical.”83 Yet, the men of the FAU, even those who preferred to work with civilians rather than the military, would likely find that in modern war the boundaries between the two diminished. A 1943 report concludes that the identity of the Unit, as an organization for the relief of human suffering, relied on prior agreements with the War Office and on the attitude of individual Unit men. On the attitudes of men, the report notes, “Of those who have gone abroad for military work, the majority know that they are in the right place, but some feel that they are not. Members who might come in the latter category should make up their minds while they are still in this country[.]”84 The physical aspect of Unit work was non-negotiable; the training served as an examination by the FAU of the trainees comfort level to work and move in similar manner to and alongside military bodies. There is no suggestion that individuals who did leave the Unit, during or after their training, were viewed any differently by the FAU organization or individual members.85 Nevertheless, the reputation and tradition of relief work conducted by

82 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).” 83 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 76. 84 “Executive Committee Report to the Staff Meeting,” May 1943, MSS 876/FAU/1948/2/2, Friends House Library. 85 “Camp Diaries (Northfield)”; “FAU Council Meeting Minutes” (Friends Ambulance Unit, February 4, 1941), MSS 876/FAU/1948/2, Friends House Library; “Executive Committee Report to the Staff Meeting,” June 17, 1942, MSS 876/FAU/1948/2/2, Friends House Library; “Executive Committee Report to the Staff Meeting,” May 1943.

the Unit was remarkable and proved to be a major draw for young men looking for alternative service in a fast-paced and wartime environment.

In the first few days of the revived Unit, there were over three hundred applications from men seeking alternative service and to begin training at the new camp. Altogether, the Unit received 5,000 enquiries regarding membership, however the organization only accepted 1,300

COs.86 A challenge the organization faced with respect to volunteers and recruitment stemmed from the Military Service Training Act and tribunal system. When the British government established conscription in 1916, military service tribunals were established throughout Britain to hear appeals from men who were applying for exemption from military service on the grounds of employment in jobs of national importance, disability, or conscientious objection.87 Despite the recognition of COs during the Great War, a debate on motivation for exemption ensued and emerged once again in 1939. Men who could defend their conviction in religious terms were looked at more favorably by the military tribunal and were granted CO status. In contrast men who self-identified as pacifist for political or personal reasons had a higher risk of dismissal of their application by the tribunal. During the First World War, those who were denied exemption were either drafted into the military against their will or were given prison sentences. Ralph H. Arnold,

Fifteenth Camp, described his father as “rebellious,” and after registering as a CO he spent two years in prison. Although his father was unwilling to speak to him about his experiences during the war, Arnold became a Quaker and registered as a CO during the Second World War.88

86 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the FAU in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 10. 87 Sarah Tudor, “The Military Service Act 1916: 100 Years” (Library In Focus, January 18, 2016), House of Lords Library, http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/LIF-2016-0003. 88 Arnold, Ralph Hodby, interview by Lyn Smith, Sound, May 16, 1991, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80011837.

Military tribunals often directed difficult cases into the FAU, and in some cases the FAU was the only alternative service the Ministry of Labour offered to men with CO status.89 The FAU served as an option of alternative service, yet the organization as a whole opposed the action by military tribunals to direct men into the organization or assume the FAU was the only alternative service available for COs. The Unit, according to Telga Davies, “insisted on retaining its freedom to accept or reject applicants, after interview, according to their convictions and suitability for membership.”90 Recruitment for the FAU, then, focused on four essential qualifications.

First, the individual conviction of objection to the war should be closely aligned with the

Quaker faith. Once the war required men to be sent overseas, it became ever more important that the Unit maintain its status and position as a pacifist organization. To fulfill this, the FAU established a quota of forty percent Quaker members. Certainly, the percentage of Friends ebbed and flowed, but by September 1942 the Executive Committee recognized the continuance of training camps took precedence over the forty percent quota of Friends and the committee agreed that only the overall presence of Quakers should be maintained. This allowed for the FAU to adhere to its mandate and preserve the “strong Quaker influence which has been fostered in the past,” while at the same time ensuring that the number of men trained for service with the FAU could increase.

The second requirement for FAU membership required that the individual not have dependents and that the individual consented to the possibility of overseas relief. This had been a significant point for the FAU since volunteers were unpaid and the foundational goal of the organization was to provide relief abroad, which would have been difficult for those who had families that relied on them financially. Supported by subscriptions and contributions, the FAU

89 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 10. 90 Davies, 10.

believed that, although it was important to provide relief wherever needed, the retainment of its financial independence through contributions reduced the risk of prejudice in relief work by the receiving of monies from official sources.91 On the significance of subscriptions and contributions,

Davies writes, “The support afforded to the Unit by subscriptions from all classes of the community was remarkable. It began with the good will of a large number of Friends and the tradition of the old Unit as a firm foundation, but soon support came from much farther afield. It ranged from a few stamps and a tin full of threepenny pieces to a single gift of £10,000.”92

For domestic relief, particularly when the Blitz began in 1940, activities were financed by the FWVRC whose main source of funding in the early years was the American Friends Service

Committee.93 Such funding directly supported the overseas relief provided by teams; individual members, however, were unpaid only receiving food, lodging, and uniforms.94 The Unit prided itself on being an organization established and manned by “disinterested” individuals who were unpaid and willing to serve.95 The First Camp created a Mutual Assistance Fund, later called the

Friends Ambulance Unit Members’ Assistance Fund, to provide men without financial means a small allowance which was based on the cost of living, conditions overseas and exchange rates.96

Once FAU teams were sent overseas their food and lodging were organized and supported by official sources such as the British Army.

91 Davies, 488. 92 Davies, 489–90. 93 Davies, 488; Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 5, 11– 12. 94 Davies, 11. 95 Davies, 2; Michael Barratt Brown, The Evolution of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (1914 and 1939) (Leominster: The Orphans’ Printing Press, Ltd., 1943), 5; “Friends’ Ambulance Unit: Fourth Annual Report, 1939-1943” (London: Friends Ambulance Unit, November 1943), MISC 256/3 FAU 9/1-2, Imperial War Museum; “Friends Ambulance Unit: Fifth Annual Report” (London: Friends Ambulance Unit, January 1945), MISC 256/3 FAU 9/1-2, Imperial War Museum; “Friends Ambulance Unit: Sixth Annual Report” (London: Friends Ambulance Unit, 1946), MISC 256/3 FAU 9/1-2, Imperial War Museum. 96 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 11.

Thirdly, volunteers were required to pass a medical examination that could determine if the individual was healthy enough to engage in strenuous relief work. Finally, the individual should have no objection to Unit discipline and working with or alongside either civil or military authorities, even as the organization maintained independent status.97 These criteria sought to create a disciplined and democratic Unit of men that could perform a wide range of tasks; the FAU men were meant to “go anywhere and do anything.” The FAU was open with their its appreciation and acceptance of individuals who were willing to take part in arduous work, but were also attracted to “adventure, excitement and danger.”98

As previously discussed, the Unit did not limit recruitment to practicing Quakers, or even to Christians. Several FAU members noted that any religious differences among the men did not have an impact on their day-to-day training or in establishing relationships and a sense of unity.99

Donald Pritchard recalled that, “Religion was not necessarily talked about a great deal, even though all the members of the Society of Friends and most of the others had some kind of a religious background.”100 Stephen Hubert Peet believed the common belief among men was their conviction of conscientious objection and later said, “that was the binding thing. The fact that some of us had come from Quaker families or Quaker school backgrounds and others from other religions or political reasons. I don’t remember it worrying me or being discussed.”101 Whereas Ralph Hodby

97 “The Unit” (The Friends Ambulance Unit, 1943 1942), FRS/1992/27, Friends House Library. 98 “The Unit.” 99 Arnold, Ralph Hodby; Peet, Stephen Hubert, interview by Lyn Smith, October 30, 1990, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80011479; Cadbury, Elisabeth ’Tessa, interview by Lyn Smith, May 7, 1994, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80013904; Cadbury, Michael H.; Rudd, David; Spray, William Hillah. 100 Donald F.L. Pritchard, “The FAU in Europe: One Member’s Personal Views,” December 1992, 256/2/6/15, Imperial War Museum. 101 Peet, Stephen Hubert.

Arnold recalls that any spiritual differences among the men, “made for interesting intellectual discussion, which was very good for all of us.”102

The socio-economic background and education of trainees in the FAU varied, with some men from the lower working class and others from the upper middle class. Most trainees, however, recognized each other as “classless” and as highly motivated in their training.103 Ralph Hodby

Arnold, formerly a member of the Merchant Navy, joined the FAU and imagined the social experience at the training camp would have been like a university. He noted there were some people he considered “thinking people” as well as those from a working-class background, but to

Arnold’s recollection they were equally motivated and engaged in the training.104

This is not to suggest, however, that some members did not internalize perceived differences. Eric Turner, who trained with the FAU in the 13th Camp, admitted there were moments of discomfort: “[A]lthough I felt a great relief at being there, those of us in our particular social group found it a little more difficult to know where we fitted in. There were times when we felt uncomfortable.”105 Turner discussed the different public, grammar, or Quaker schools the young men came from and the sense of confidence they seemed to have because of it. Ultimately, Turner remarks that men like him from working-class backgrounds were not excluded from the group and the “great redeeming feature of the FAU was that it was essentially a very kindly community. […]

As I gained confidence in the FAU, I came to realize that I was accepted for what I was.”106

102 Arnold, Ralph Hodby. 103 Rudd, David; Cadbury, Michael H.; Edmead, Frank, interview by Lyn Smith, Sound, December 6, 1993, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80013366; Arnold, Ralph Hodby. 104 Arnold, Ralph Hodby. 105 Turner, Eric Aubrey John, interview by Lyn Smith, August 7, 1991, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80011960; Smith, Pacifists in Action, 44. 106 Turner, Eric Aubrey John.

Women in the FAU and Barmoor

Beginning in 1940, the FAU assisted with domestic relief in shelters during the Blitz, yet by 1941 the work transitioned into permanent forms of social relief work for families and children.

Since the FAU conceptualized its work as “emergency” relief and trained volunteers accordingly, the organization believed their men were unqualified to provide relief of a more social nature.107

As early as 1939, women inquired about positions within the FAU, yet the committees were unsure of how to incorporate a women’s section that did not conflict with the relief activities of the FAU men and the official Society of Friends organization, the Friends War Victims Relief Committee that had been recently reestablished for domestic aid. As the needs increased with the destruction caused by the Blitz, Peter Hume took advice from Edith Pye and wrote to Elizabeth “Tessa”

Cadbury in the fall of 1940 asking for assistance in London shelters, food schemes, and rest centers.108 Cadbury, a member of the FWVRC and active in assistance for Czech refugees, agreed to establish a women’s section of the FAU. She reached out to Dr. Gwendolene Knight for additional support and assistance, and in January 1941 Cadbury and Dr. Knight opened the first training camp at Barmoor in Yorkshire.

Nine training camps were held at Barmoor with eight to twelve women training at any one time. At its inception, a letter and application were sent to all the women who expressed interest in joining the FAU. The application requested information on the applicants’ current work and educational background, the basis of their pacifism, and qualifications for relief service. Cadbury

107 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 42; Smith, Pacifists in Action, 47; “Meeting of the General Purposes Committee,” April 23, 1941, MSS 876/FAU/1948/2/2, Friends House Library. 108 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946; Smith, Pacifists in Action; Edith M. Pye, A Quaker Adventure: The Story of Nine Years’ Relief and Reconstruction (London: Nisbet & Co. Ltd., 1926); “Food Conditions in Europe: A Statement on the Effect of War and Blockade on People in German-Controlled Countries” (London: Famine Relief Committee, July 1942); Dingle Foot, Edith M. Pye, and Roy Walker, “Food Relief for Occupied Europe” (Peace Aims Pamphlet, 1942); Hugh Maw, The Training and Experience of a Quaker Relief Worker, 1946-1948 (London: Hugh W. Maw; Words by Design, 2014).

and Dr. Knight then followed applications up with interviews to determine whether or not the individual qualified for the WFAU. Similar to the men’s section, the WFAU accepted women from a variety of religious backgrounds yet insisted on a shared conviction of pacifism. Though Dr.

Knight would later recall a hesitation to push Quaker views on the female trainees and few discussions centered on pacifism in general, the women in training still built a community based on a shared sense of purpose.109

In contrast to their male counterparts, the women who came to Barmoor were in their late- twenties to early-thirties and came from middle-class backgrounds. Cadbury later suggested that,

“on the whole the women were more mature and experienced that most FAU men: most had some training or life experience after school.”110 Although most of the women who joined the women’s section were unmarried, by February 1941, the FAU Council decided that women married to FAU men and interested in relief work should be admitted to the women’s section if they had had a successful interview. Their admittance into the women’s section, however, did not come with the promise they would be stationed near their husbands for work.111

Once accepted, trainees were advised to pack for their stay at Barmoor and given specific instructions. The first camp was held in January, so women were told to bring strong shoes and overalls, writing materials as well as first aid and air raid precaution handbooks, ration books, identity cards, National Health Insurance Cards, and “enough sugar and butter and tea to last until the end of the week.”112 Barmoor was lent to the FAU by T. Edmund Harvey and after “suitable

109 Knight, Gwendolene Dorothy, interview by Smith, Lyn, Sound, September 17, 1989, Imperial War Museum; “F.A.U. Women’s Section News Letter” (Canonbury Place: Friends Ambulance Unit, July 1941), MSS 876/FAU/1947/1/3, Friends House Library; “Barmoor News” (Canonbury Place: Friends Ambulance Unit, n.d.), MSS 876/FAU/1947/1/3, Friends House Library. 110 Smith, Pacifists in Action, 49. 111 “FAU Council Meeting Minutes.” 112 “Friends’ Ambulance Unit (Women’s Section) Application Form,” December 1940, MISC 256/2/7, Imperial War Museum.

modifications” was fit to serve as a training center. The site was remote and without amenities; the nearest rail station was five miles away and the camp did not have electricity or running water.

Similar to Manor Farm, the goal of Barmoor was not simply to give women the skills necessary to provide relief, but also to “toughen them up” and “make them adaptable” for field work.113 Dr.

Knight said, “If they can cope here, they can cope in a good many places. […] There’s nothing like living together for three or four weeks to find out what people’s strengths and weaknesses are.”114

The First Camp developed a routine that was followed by successive camps. Trainees were divided into four groups, which included cooks, scullery maids, housemaids, and “messengers” who dealt with work related to coal and blackouts. Like the system at Manor Farm, trainees at

Barmoor rotated through each duty. In contrast to the rigorous route marches and drill practices male Unit members engaged in at Manor Farm, female trainees had “tramps on the moors,” physical training was replaced with “drawing water from the pump,” tobogganing in a nearby lake, and walks to Kirbymoorside, Lastingham.115 Training at Barmoor largely reflected the roles the

FAU envisioned for female members, which included areas such as first aid and medicine, air raid relief, social work, and the cultivation of skills in mechanics and mass cooking.116

As a trained physician, Dr. Knight taught anatomy, physiology, first aid and home nursing, and public health. Unlike their male counterparts, many of the female trainees came to Barmoor with experience in nursing and held certificates in First Aid, Home Nursing, and Air Raid

Precaution, so the daily lectures given by Dr. Knight were often considered a refresher.117 Women

113 Knight, Gwendolene Dorothy. 114 Knight, Gwendolene Dorothy. 115 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 43; “Report on Women’s Camp at Barmoor” (Friends Ambulance Unit, January 8, 1941), MSS 876/FAU/1948/2, Friends House Library. 116 “Report on Women’s Camp at Barmoor”; Knight, Gwendolene Dorothy; Cadbury, Elisabeth ’Tessa. 117 “Report on Women’s Camp at Barmoor.”

were also offered the opportunity to expand their previous training. According to the February

1941 newsletter, the Friends Ambulance Unit Chronicle, “Three members of the Women’s

Training Camp have gone to the Retreat at York for intensive Nurses’ Preliminary Training

Courses.”118 The Nurses’ Preliminary Training Course included lectures as well as informational films as methods of instruction.119

The women’s section reasoned that once the opportunity for overseas relief presented itself to the men’s section, women would be needed at home to fill in for them, particularly in social and welfare work. During the day, volunteers engaged in social activities in villages near Barmoor, such as youth group sports games and organizing materials and supplies for the local hospital. In the evenings, the women discussed topics on social questions and problems in the field. The Fourth

Camp included a session in which women were asked to choose a “social subject” to read and write an essay on for discussion among the group.120 As a training tool, the essays and discussions would familiarize the volunteers with contemporary research and ideas within the field, particularly regarding child welfare programs and air raid relief procedures. Although Barmoor envisioned women’s work within the Unit differently than that of the men’s section, letters written to the women’s section newsletter suggest trainees found their training useful and the environment of the camp fostered a sense of camaraderie among the many women who trained at Barmoor.

Initially, the FAU considered the Women’s Friends Ambulance Unit a separate organization, but by mid-1941 the “Women” was dropped and the FAU became an organization crewed by both men and women.121 Despite this initiative, gender differences remained a tricky

118 Friends Ambulance Unit, “Friends Ambulance Unit Chronicle” (London: Friends Ambulance Unit, February 10, 1941), PERS B/F7/AMB/2, Friends House Library. 119 “Report on Women’s Camp at Barmoor.” 120 “F.A.U. Women’s Section News Letter.” 121 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the FAU in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 43.

aspect within the Unit. Since the FAU provided medical and emergency relief in the thick of war, the organization served as an outlet for men to maintain their pacifist convictions and values as they fulfilled their sense of wartime service. Just as in the previous war, men who adhered to pacifist beliefs by gaining CO status were often labeled “cowards” in their communities and by society, yet their training and work with military bodies and facing danger in the field granted men the opportunity to prove their masculinity and patriotism. The FAU, according to Davies, “had imagined itself as very male and very tough, formed for frontline work, and many wondered whether the introduction of women would not be the first sign of softness creeping in.”122 The integration of women into the organization had the potential to feminize the work of the FAU, even strengthen criticisms and perceptions of cowardice.

Yet, the perception or recognition of gender differences did not feature as predominantly among female trainees. At Barmoor, Cadbury recalls that any differences in work and gender was not something openly discussed or challenged. She notes there was, “no time to theorize on what was women’s work and what was men’s work. At least not from the women’s end.”123 Dr. Knight would later argue, “I always think it’s much easier for a woman to be a CO than a man. Men have always got to prove themselves and, thank goodness, women don’t.”124

To be sure, there were doubts on the possibility of even sending women overseas for relief, let alone into a conflict zones alongside the military as per FAU tradition. Arguments made by the

Executive Committee against sending women abroad included the “regulations preventing untrained British women from going abroad,” the expense of maintaining such women, and the notion that women were “a liability partly because they are not so strong.” According to the first

122 Davies, 42. 123 Cadbury, Elisabeth ’Tessa. 124 Smith, Pacifists in Action, 52.

newsletter of the “FAU Women’s Section” in July 1941, an attempt was made to reassure the Unit women that their services would be put to use even if the opportunity to travel overseas was dismissed:

When thinking of the section’s work in the future, it is worth bearing in mind that, even if none of us goes on foreign service, large numbers from the men’s section will probably go abroad and the brunt of the social work in this country will no doubt fall on us. It is, therefore, more necessary than ever for us to think of our work, not so much as an emergency measure, but as part of a long-term plan; not only as a palliative but as perhaps the beginning of the reconstruction of the post-war world.125

Despite such reassurances, women of the Unit wrote a letter to the FAU Executive Committee stating their desire to serve overseas.126 The letter argued that the skills women had as nurses and drivers would greatly benefit relief efforts abroad, as would their training as relief workers and contribution in the care of young children, and that any additional time women had should be spent training in hospitals, gaining first-hand experience, and learning about the country where they might be sent. The letter also argued on the basis of gender equality: “[W]e would stress two theses:

1. That the women are equal members of the Unit with the men, and should therefore claim an equal share with them in shaping the policy of the Unit. 2. That over a long period, a mixed society is more healthy than a bachelor society.”127 These comments clearly show the resolve to have the women’s Unit considered equal to the men’s Unit. It also indicated the strength of utilizing gendered discourse to gain equal access for women, and the need for women to be assertive and active in policy making even if it meant transgressing traditional gender boundaries. After all, women serving abroad during war was not unprecedented; during the Great War women made up

125 “F.A.U. Women’s Section News Letter.” 126 Women’s Section Friends Ambulance Unit, “The Place of Women in the Unit’s Work Abroad,” October 17, 1941, FRS/1992/27, Friends House Library; Angela Martin, “Angela Martin to Tessa Rowntree,” October 28, 1941, FRS/1992/27, Friends House Library. 127 Women’s Section Friends Ambulance Unit, “The Place of Women in the Unit’s Work Abroad,” October 17, 1941.

nearly ten percent of the male-dominated FAU personnel by serving at the Queen Alexandra

Hospital in Dunkirk and in the Anglo-Italian Ambulance Service.

Initially, military tribunals did not require women to provide testimony and witness since the Military Training Acts were specific to men. Cadbury and Dr. Knight recalled travelling to interview women who submitted letters of interest and applications to the FAU in order to determine whether the women were truly COs. In December 1941, the service acts were extended to include unmarried women and childless widows between the ages of twenty and thirty.128 This meant both men and women were required to stand before tribunals and defend their convictions in order to qualify for alternative service. There was a total of 1,074 women who registered for

CO status until December 1948; of those 64.1 per cent were granted the status on condition they undertake civilian work and 3.5 per cent were directed to non-combatant duties in the military, only 6.4 per cent were registered with unconditional status and 26 per cent were denied CO status.129

Many women, however, did not have the opportunity to provide witness at testimony at a tribunal. In an interview with Lyn Smith, Lilian Cadoux recalled not having to provide witness and testimony before a tribunal, yet she wished she could have had the opportunity to do so:

Being so idealistic and being terribly, terribly romantic I heard Vera Brittain, I was prepared to be virtually martyred over my new-found faith. I can clearly remember sitting up until two in the morning in my bedroom in this Bournemouth hostel writing out my statement. I think I would have positively welcomed a tribunal, I would have loved it because that [would have given] me the chance to declare what I stood for, but the tribunal never came. I was pretty sure that it was because of this particular service the FRS was doing for the government - here were we two girls having given up nursing, but doing work

128 “Conscription: The Second World War,” Living Heritage, accessed May 4, 2017, http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private- lives/yourcountry/overview/conscriptionww2/. 129 Andrew Rigby, “The Peace Pledge Union: From Peace to War, 1936-1945,” in Challenge to Mars: Essays on Pacifism from 1918 to 1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 178.

that nobody else would do. If they would have put us in prison who would have looked after these old people in these hostels? So, my chance at a bit of drama was dashed.130

Like other women, Cadoux felt deprived when not given the chance to provide witness to her pacifism. The opportunity to provide such witness at military tribunals and obtaining the legal status of CO was not relegated or significant to the experience of men alone but was an important part of pacifist identity, regardless of gender. The inclusion of women to military tribunals to provide testimony did not, at least on the administrative level, lend to a sense of equality.

In February 1942, Cadbury and Dr. Knight wrote to the FAU about concerns they shared related to their position within the FAU and the role of a women’s section. Their concerns centered on the failure of communication between the two groups, particularly in terms of responsibility and function. Cadbury and Dr. Knight argued that a part of the problem they face with regards to communication was rooted in different gendered approaches. They write, “We have not managed to gain your confidence sufficiently for you to treat us as colleagues. When you ask our advice it seems to us as though you do it as a matter of policy – to be tactful and keep the peace – not necessarily because you think the advice is worth having.”131 This certainly reflects the hesitation within the FAU to admit women to a traditionally male organization, as well as gender discourses that defined power relations and denied women active participation in policy making.

Conclusions

As an intensive training program, Manor Farm lasted for six weeks and in addition to stretcher drill and military-style route marches, the course included lectures and practice in first

130 Cadoux, Lilian Violet, interview by Lyn Smith, August 10, 1989, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80010662. 131 Tessa Rowntree and Gwendolyn Knight, “Letter to FAU,” February 23, 1942, MISC 256/2/7, Imperial War Museum.

aid, home nursing, and ambulance services. The FAU focused on the “first stage” of relief and believed that its services would be most effective if it trained volunteers to work alongside the army. The training programs at Manor Farm, therefore, included military-style drill and route marches, as well as site visits to the RAMC. Just as during the Great War, the close relationship between the FAU and military bodies in the field continued to be a point of contention between the FAU and the Society of Friends in 1939. The reputation and success the Unit achieved during the Great War in emergency medical and ambulance services served as evidence of the contributions made by the FAU and provided confidence among the volunteers as they sought opportunities for alternative service beginning in 1939. The FAU drew on experiences of relief work during the Great War to emphasize the benefit of close relationship to military bodies when providing emergency relief and medical services, yet also focused energies on introducing volunteers to contemporary reports and developments regarding military technology and in the field of medicine.

The nature of the FAU brought a larger proportion of men than women to the organization, yet the Battle of Britain proved that the organization needed female members whose experience in social services could help support the FAU as a whole. The women’s training camp at Barmoor did not center on the same physical, military-style training as Manor Farm; instead it included training in social service at local institutions. Furthermore, after their training, many of the FAU women took up positions in domestic relief and welfare services that enabled male members to begin work overseas.

That the FAU began training volunteer relief workers in 1939 is significant to the larger narrative of “planning-mindedness” and the emergence of new war-time humanitarian organizations. The FAU utilized the experiences of relief and aid during the First World War as

well as integrated current military and medical practices to train and better prepare volunteers for overseas wartime and postwar relief work. The early training also enabled FAU volunteers to work in domestic relief programs during the Battle of Britain, which served a dual purpose of providing much needed aid to displaced and suffering populations at home as well as additional training for the types of work the FAU might be expected to confront in the immediate postwar years. Other

British voluntary organizations, such as the FWVRC, would only emerge in the midst of and in response to the Battle of Britain, the FAU, in contrast, embraced the benefit of early “planning- mindedness” as they constructed training programs and sought out field experts to aid in preparing effective and efficient relief units.

CHAPTER THREE: BUILDING THE FRIENDS RELIEF SERVICE

In November 1940, British Friends responded to aerial bombing of Britain by the German

Luftwaffe by reviving the Friends War Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC). The Society of

Friends did not actively provide aid to civilians when the first bombs dropped in September 1940, but instead provided relief though ad hoc groups and Quaker mission settlements under the

Bedford Institute Association and the FAU. As the air war needs intensified and communities’ needs increased, the FWVRC and FAU began working collaboratively in emergency domestic relief service, which included opening and staffing hostels, rest centers, air-raid shelters, and aiding in the evacuation of populations in bombed areas. The “emergency” nature of the bombing allowed for a relatively easy collaboration between the two groups. When the work became that of a more

“long-term” nature, however, the FAU was not adequately equipped whereas the FWVRC had both the personnel and ability to provide long-term welfare services. As the bombing decreased in

1942, the FWVRC and FAU found that volunteers in previously targeted areas were at risk of increased boredom and, particularly for the FWVRC, the concern for preparing for postwar service abroad mounted.

Since the 1920s, the Society of Friends maintained the Friends Service Council (FSC) as a permanent body that assisted in overseas relief between the two wars and when postwar planning began, the Friends considered either the FSC or the FWVRC to be the overseeing committee for relief work abroad. Another Quaker committee, the Germany Emergency Committee, later changed to the Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens (FCRA), had first-hand experience and knowledge of what postwar conditions in Europe might be like. The FCRA was created in response to anti-Jewish policies instituted in Nazi Germany beginning in 1933. The FCRA

provided aid to those persecuted and prosecuted under the new Nazi state based on their religion or political views, particularly in the aftermath of Kristallnacht in 1938 and in practice by supporting the Kindertransport. The Friends recognized that each organization possessed something the other did not; the FSC did not have the experience of sending hundreds of men and women into the field, the FWVRC could handle emergency relief with short-term personnel, and the FCRA had insights on the devastation experienced by civilian populations in war torn Europe.

By 1941, the FWVRC and Relief Section of the FAU united to form the Friends War Relief Service

(FWRS). The collaboration between the FAU and FWRS addressed concerns regarding potential overlap in transportation, distribution of clothing, and postwar building services by the two organizations.

In 1942, representatives from the Friends Service Council, the FWRS, the FAU, and the

FCRA established the Post-war Service Committee in an effort to begin preparation for postwar relief work overseas. In the context of emerging national and international organizations, the Post- war Service Committee came to the realization that it was not conducive to “speedy decisions” or administrative work, nor did it have the official machinery for sending volunteers into the field.132

As a result, the Friends Relief Service Committee was created in 1943 to oversee three service sections – the Home, Overseas, and Refugees and Aliens sections—which ultimately served to lessen administrative work and confusion. By November of that year Friends renamed the committee and it became the Friends Relief Service (FRS).

The FAU was cautious in its consideration of collaborating with the Society of Friends in the creation of the FRS. The FAU was apprehensive about the possibility of losing its independent nature and its freedom to cooperate with authorities, particularly military authorities, which

132 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 104.

conflicted with the FRS mandate. The Unit also feared that any cooperation with a “main committee” or having non-officer members sitting on the Executive Committee would slow rapid action. With regards to differing mandates, the FAU acknowledged that methods and approaches to relief by the two organizations were different that could result in a difficult “fusion.”133 The advantages to working collaboratively, however, surpassed the concerns; both the FAU and a collaborative organization could provide “better standard of work” by the freeing up of FAU members for emergency work and allowing the other organization to attend to long-term or permanent obligations of relief and, more significantly, collaboration would lend to better planned and coordinated postwar relief effort.134

Developed out of the FWVRC, the FRS drew on past experiences in war relief to conceptualize postwar relief, thus the FRS believed that its role would be in the “second stage” of relief. The “second stage” of relief resembled emergency relief comparable to services of the

FWVRC during the Great War or of the FSC during the refugee crisis in Spain.135 Those services included emergency feeding and distribution of clothing and materials, building and construction of homes and rest centers, and assisting in the establishment of temporary refugee camps. The FRS maintained the FWVRC tradition of providing relief to civilians and those who, behind the front lines and out of the “limelight,” might be the more neglected. Of concern to the FRS was the care of displaced persons and the organization believed it could draw on contemporary experience with air raid victims. When developing a training program, the FRS focused on courses that incorporated the experiences—both successful and unsuccessful—of past relief programs. It also

133 Brandon Cadbury, “Report to Members of the Council,” January 28, 1942, MSS 876/FAU/1948/2/3, Friends House Library. 134 Cadbury. 135 Friends War Relief Service, “Notes on the Project for a Training Centre for Relief Work Abroad,” January 29, 1943, FRS/1992/18, Friends House Library.

integrated contemporary research on welfare services and conditions in wartime Europe and utilized organizational connections to bring in field experts to discuss topics relevant to postwar relief and rehabilitation.

Mount Waltham

In contrast to the FAU, the FRS did not have an official training camp. As the FRS was an amalgamation of FAU civilian relief and the FWVRC, the creation a collaborative training camp for FRS volunteers seemed the best decision. Michael Barrett Brown, FAU and Emergency Relief

Officer for the FRS, suggested a headquarters be created, a sort of “base of operations” where those serving in the mobile reserve units assisting during air-raids could, when inactive, participate in a “planned curriculum” to prepare for service abroad.136 The curriculum also included lectures on topics related to relief services at home, which included information on fire services, shelter policies and the shelters in London, and information services after raids.137 For those new to the field, these lectures would ensure preparedness for domestic service.

The committee debated the location for training and during that time the camp was simply referred to as “Phoenix Park.” One site the committee considered was Spiceland in Devon. The site, leased by the Society of Friends in 1939, operated as a training site from March 1940 to

December 1945 yet did not have a “set program.” Instead Spiceland offered a one- to three-month training program based on an individual’s circumstances and focused on elementary farm work, domestic work including mass cooking and housekeeping, and construction and carpentry.

136 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 107. 137 “Course I: Air-Raid Relief 3 Shelter Policy” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; “Course I: Air-Raid Relief 1 The Fire Services” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; “Course I: Air-Raid Relief 5 Shelters in the City of London” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; “Course I: Air-Raid Relief 17 Operational Control of British Civil Defence Services” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library.

Spiceland set a precedent for the training camp envisioned by the FRS. Roger Wilson said those who trained at Spiceland had “a balance, maturity of outlook, and sense of mutual responsibility in membership of a group which stood them and the organization in good stead as long as they remained members of it.”138

Alexander Bryan, who would later join and train with the FRS, began his training at

Spiceland in 1940. In an interview, Bryan described Spiceland as “primitive” as there was no heating during the day, although the camp did have a “community spirit” among the approximately fifty volunteers.139 He recalled, “Everyone who was motivated towards performing a useful service, and they were all very keen to equip themselves to do this.”140 Although he did not express interest in a long stay at Spiceland or a pursuit of full-time work on the land, Bryan sat in on lectures on building and tools, and engaged in construction work. As a CO, he was interested in gaining employable skills: “I really wanted to get out and do a useful job. I knew that before long, maybe sooner rather than later, I should probably have to go to prison again, and therefore I didn’t want to spend the time training for something I might never be able to do. Therefore, I was anxious to get a job of some sort.”141

Despite the benefits of the site and the training provided, there were serious concerns over the practicality of the camp’s location. Noted in a January 1943 memorandum, “Spiceland has proved its value as a place of primary training, but for what might be described as graduate study, it has certain inescapable shortcomings. It is a very difficult place for visiting teachers and has no library facilities. The proposed training will depend a great deal on the availability of both of

138 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 106. 139 Alexander, Bryan, interview by Lyn Smith, September 5, 1980, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80004706. 140 Alexander, Bryan. 141 Alexander, Bryan.

these.” 142 Throughout training the FRS utilized outside resources, especially experts and specialists, as well as guidebooks and handbooks written by other organizations and institutions, in their training programs. Access and libraries, then, were necessary components in deciding on a suitable camp site. The committee determined that the new training camp should be in either

London or Birmingham.

The case for Birmingham was in the “experience and ease of starting,” since Selly Oak

Colleges offered the FRS accommodation. As a Quaker center for adult education, Selly Oak offered excellent library facilities useful for trainees studying an array of topics from contemporary

European history to social welfare. Additionally, the center offered training courses for relief workers in basic and practical occupations such as camp management.143 For instance, the FAU training camp at Manor Farm often received Jack Hoyland to lecture on contemporary events, on socialism and nationalism, and on the British Empire.144 In the end, however, Selly Oak did not become the site for FRS training; the committee agreed that contact between trainees, the Post War

Committees, and the Friends House could be more easily maintained in London, especially since it could serve as a place for volunteers to stay.145 In 1943, the FRS committee determined that the training site would be located in London at Mount Waltham.

With large open spaces and rooms for training exercises and courses, Mount Waltham could accommodate up to fifty trainees but was by no means comfortable. Roger Wilson argued the relief worker should, “live adaptably and imaginatively in unforeseen circumstances.” 146

Mount Waltham reflected such sentiments: “The plumbing system ensured the rarity of hot water

142 Friends War Relief Service, “Memorandum, Notes on the Project for a Training Centre for Relief Work Abroad,” January 29, 1943, FRS/1992/18, Friends House Library. 143 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 2. 144 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).” 145 Friends War Relief Service, “Notes on the Project for a Training Centre for Relief Work Abroad.” 146 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 109.

in any one of the three bathrooms, and no amount of attention to fires ever made the place warm.

The kitchen was as far from the dining room as ingenuity could arrange; a poor state of decoration and a muddy garden guaranteed dust and dirt, and noise travelled as if by magic.”147

Mount Waltham was a collaborative effort by the Post-war Committees of the Friends’

Service Council, Friends’ War Relief Service, and the FAU with the goal to provide trainees with knowledge of past experiences, different perspectives, and various levels of “expertise” in relief work. As a nine- to twelve-week course, trainees participated in in-depth lectures covering contemporary European history and culture, European languages, Quakerism, refugee camp management, nutrition, and medical relief work. For some trainees, these courses would have been a “refresher” to work they previously were engaged in, but for many these courses served as an introduction. The FRS designed the course to offer volunteers who had prior specialization in one or more branches of relief work “a working knowledge of the other branches of work, so that specialists in one type of work may be able to give intelligent assistance to those who have specialized in any other, and so that, if a specialist in one subject should find himself isolated, and faced with an unexpected emergency, he may at least be able to do something to help.” 148 The individuals who offered lectures at Mount Waltham came from a variety of background and fields:

“Approximately 25% of the lectures will be given by members of F.W.R.S. and the FAU, who have special knowledge or experience, the remaining 75% being given by outside speakers.”149

For example, during a COBSRA training program held at Mount Waltham in September 1943, lecturers included Mr. F.J. Koehler of the U.S. Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation

Operations and Major E. Sanford Carter of the Relief Department Board of Trade offered a lecture

147 Wilson, 108. 148 Tom Copeman, “Tom Copeman Correspondence, 1943-1952,” 1943, Temp MSS 286/1, Friends House Library. 149 Robin Whitworth, “Outline of the First Course, June-September, 1943,” 1943, 2, FRS/1992/18, Friends House Library.

series on relief work experience in North Africa, Dr. Melville Mackenzie from the Ministry of

Health covered the principles of general and medical relief work during the Great War and interwar years, and Dr. N.M. Goodman also from the Ministry of Health discussed elements of hygiene protection for relief workers.150

The FRS established that recruitment to the organization be based on the availability of individuals for immediate domestic or overseas service and the ability of an individual to respond to the “estimated relief needs” of the second stage of relief. Such individuals were selected impartially from present members as well as those eager to work with the Friends.151 Like the FAU, the FRS was inclusive to Quakers and non-Quakers, which Roger Wilson later argued, enriched the organization and the service it gave. In contrast to the FAU, the FRS continued the tradition established in the FWVRC to readily accept a much larger proportion of females. Over the course of the war, the FAU had 1,314 members with only 97 women, whereas the FRS had 1,232 members with 603 being women. The training course at Mount Waltham also served as additional training for individuals with some experience in relief work or, “equivalent experience in the ordinary course of events,” which included social work and air raid relief.152

Men interested in working with the FRS were required to attend Military Tribunals to receive CO and exemption status. In April 1941, shortly after beginning work at a hospital, Tim

Evens had his tribunal. Though he submitted for unconditional exemption, when he received conditional exemption, he did not challenge the decision. In an interview, Evens suggested his background in Quakerism had an impact on the tribunal’s decision to grant him CO status, which he believed was unfair to those who came to similar conclusions as his own and shared in similar

150 Tom Copeman, “Tom Copeman Correspondence, 1943-1952,” 1943, Temp MSS 286/1, Friends House Library. 151 Friends War Relief Service, “Notes on the Project for a Training Centre for Relief Work Abroad.” 152 Friends War Relief Service.

convictions but did not have the same religious background as himself.153 In contrast, Hugh

Jenkins experienced some difficulty at his tribunal; raised in a Baptist home, Jenkins believed himself to be an “unconscious pacifist” though none of his family were pacifist. In the 1930s,

Jenkins signed the Peace Pledge and when the war started, he wanted to provide some testimony to his convictions. While he believed that the Military Tribunal appreciated his sincerity, it directed him to the RAMC, a decision he challenged since the RAMC did not reflect his testimony. He told the Tribunal he could not join the RAMC and instead requested to work on the land, and the tribunal granted his request.154

The FRS did not aim to create Quakers of the non-Quakers who joined, yet there was an overall sentiment and practice that adhered to traditional Quaker spirituality within the organization and in the training center at Mount Waltham. Hugh Maw was one of two Quakers who trained with the FRS at Woodstock just after the end of the war. He recalled, “Some of us were nervous about getting back to the higher education conditions of the school room, but what was so refreshing was the easy transition from almost riotous fun to a real depth of silent worship that the group was able to make so quickly. We felt ‘gathered’ in the truly Quaker sense.”155

Lilian Cadoux, however, had a distinct experience training with the FRS. She came to the

FRS with both nursing and life experience from the Red Cross and Voluntary Aid Detachment.

She warmly recalls as a young woman she enjoyed dancing and wearing lipstick—these two things were disapproved of and considered “un-Quakerly.”156 Though she found her training fascinating, the discomfort she experienced with the FRS did not come from fellow trainees, but from the

153 Evens, Tim William Henry, interview by Lyn Smith, Sound, May 28, 1988, Imperial War Museum. 154 Jenkins, Hugh Montfort, interview by Lyn Smith, April 12, 1995, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80014884. 155 Maw, The Training and Experience of a Quaker Relief Worker, 1946-1948, 12. 156 Cadoux, Lilian Violet.

overall ethos and principles of the FRS. At the end of her training with FRS, Cadoux was sent before a panel of Friends where she was told she was not suitable for service abroad. She recollected, “Not only had there been certain adverse reports on me sent in by wardens of old people’s hostels, but the warden at Mt. Waltham had noted that I was out enjoying myself most evenings of the course.”157 Though she had returned from evenings out to type her notes from day lectures, she did not reveal this to the panel. Whether it would have changed the decision by the

Friends is not clear. She said, “I don’t think I would have wanted to plead my case. I think I was aware that there were these really strong differences between me, with all my high ideals, but at the same time this frivolity and love of enjoying myself […] and the Friends Relief Service. But nevertheless, I was absolutely shattered because this was something extremely important in every way [to] my future career.”158

During her training, Lilian became acquainted with Harold Cadoux who, as a FAU member, suggested she join the FAU and so she did shortly after her dismissal. “So, with a reference from

Corder Catchpool, a friend of Harold’s father, I was in the FAU in a very short time. […] In fact,

I was blissfully happy being in the FAU after the FRS.”159 With the collaborative nature of the

FRS and FAU, Cadoux was able to successfully transfer from one organization to the other.

Despite her desirable training and experience prior to joining the training course at Mount

Waltham and her dedication during the course by typing notes, Cadoux’s dismissal from the FRS originated on the principles and ideals held by the FRS as a Quaker organization.

157 Cadoux, Lilian Violet. 158 Cadoux, Lilian Violet. 159 Smith, Pacifists in Action, 61.

Many of the trainees to the FRS came from the FWVRC, Spiceland Training Center, the

FAU, or from jobs within the field of social and welfare work.160 In June 1943, FAU member

Arthur Hinton attended a two-week course for FAU and FRS members on relief work and then a two-month course at Mount Waltham. Reports from Europe suggested the FAU would be working closely with civilian wounded and refugees, so several FAU members were seconded to the FRS or took the opportunity to attend courses on refugees and camp management offered at Mount

Waltham. Of the course at Mount Waltham, Hinton recalled:

This was a very intensive course comprising language study, first aid, how to deal with infectious disease, and the problems of dealing with refugees and their physical and psychological difficulties. It was an excellent course, […], and we had some valuable talks, e.g. by Arthur Koestler on the psychology of concentration camp prisoners, Francesca Wilson on work in Spain with refugees during the Spanish civil war and Bertha Bracey on her work with refugees from the Continent.161

For the FAU member that did not have access to lectures on these topics at Manor Farm, lectures on the “psychology of concentration camp prisoners” and on interwar and contemporary refugee work had the potential to be beneficial for any FAU volunteers looking to work beyond the first stage of relief work and into the second or even third stages of relief.

During the Blitz, Elizabeth Dearden worked with a children’s aid association in London, though she decided she wanted a change of pace that had a “religious flavor” to it. She knew

Quakers and of their work, so she applied to work with the FWVRC and had a position as a caseworker for “hard to place evacuees” from the East End of London.162 Dearden then received

160 Dearden, Elizabeth, interview by Lyn Smith, July 11, 1995, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80015152; Alexander, Bryan; Maw, The Training and Experience of a Quaker Relief Worker, 1946-1948; Cadoux, Lilian Violet; Evens, Tim William Henry; Hall-Williams, John Eryl, interview by Lyn Smith, March 30, 1995, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80014863; Jenkins, Hugh Montfort; Roger C. Wilson, “Notes Regarding the Establishment of ‘Phoenix Park,’” February 2, 1943, FRS/1992/18, Friends House Library. 161 Arthur Hinton and Hedy Hinton, “Friends Ambulance Unit,” November 1996, 6, MISC 256/2/6/12, Imperial War Museum. 162 Dearden, Elizabeth.

a scholarship to continue her studies in mental health and at the end of 1943, she began work as psychiatric social worker at a child guidance clinic in Birmingham. Dearden joined the FRS in

1944 and came to the organization with a degree from London University in social work. Similarly,

Joyce Parkinson attended St. Hughes College where she studied French and German. She finished university in 1936 and began training as a housing manager at Octavia Hill Housing, and in 1944 she found a position with a housing association in London’s East End. Over the course of 1944,

Parkinson worked with the Citizens Advice Bureau. She would later suggest that the families she worked with were often better off than many because they were in housing association flats. As a trained housing manager, Parkinson was often the only educated person available as a liaison between the tenants and the authorities who could assist with their problems. She joined the FRS training course at Mount Waltham in 1944.

Independence, Impartiality, and Uniforms

The FRS faced challenges with the Council of British Societies for Relief Abroad

(COBSRA) and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in the first few years of their existence. Tensions ranged from retaining individual identity as an organization, the non-fraternization order, and the wearing of uniforms. First, based on the assumption that the

Allies would win the war, the mandate of the UNRRA sought to ensure that postwar relief did not reflect what had been experienced after the Great War. A 1944 memorandum issued by the United

Kingdom representative of the UNRRA addressed the reasons for a highly coordinated body to oversee relief efforts in Europe, including the argument against the sending of private voluntary societies into Europe. The memorandum states:

[E]ven if the foreign voluntary societies were in every case able to know exactly where their assistance was likely to be most urgently needed, it would obviously be extremely

difficult for them so to apportion between themselves the various tasks to be accomplished as, on the one hand, to guard completely against any risk of duplication or overlapping of effort, or, on the other, to ensure that equally urgent but less known needs are adequately met.163

Initially, the Supreme Command in Europe would only recognize the American Red Cross and the

Joint War Organization of the British Red Cross and the Order of St. John (BRCS) in an attempt to avoid chaos in relief efforts. The BRCS preemptively entered into an agreement with the

Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, to act as a single channel with the military.

This agreement was negatively received by the organizations in the COBSRA; the primary concern of all organizations associated with COBSRA centered on the notion that the BRCS would impinge on the individual identity of the groups.164 After negotiations, the BRCS ensured the COBSRA that the FRS would retain its identity and emerging reports from Normandy ensured that the compromise made had been in the best interest of both the organizations of the COBSRA and the growing populations in need.

The insistence of the UNRRA to provide aid to victims of German and Japanese aggression only, as well as the issuing of a non-fraternization order by the Allied militaries, presented a second challenge to the Friends Relief Service. The mandate and approach of the FRS emphasized democratic and impartial relief based on a belief in the “brotherhood of all mankind,” which, as discussed, had been a part of Quaker war relief efforts since the early nineteenth century.

Furthermore, the FRS sought to relieve the suffering of civilian populations and in particular those

“whose needs might be the more neglected because their welfare was not of direct interest in

163 “Foreign Voluntary Relief Work in Europe: Co-Ordination of Activities of Voluntary Relief Societies” (United Kingdom Representative, European Regional Committee of UNRRA, November 14, 1944), FRS/1992/27, Friends House Library. 164 John Judkyn and Charles F. Carter, “Memorandum to All Members of the Main, Overseas, Personnel and Finance Committees,” Overseas Committee: Supplementary Documents, August 22, 1944, FRS/1992/61, Friends House Library; Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 115.

winning of the war.”165 As early as August 1944, the FRS made its stance on not adhering to the non-fraternization clear. 166 Based on its work during and after the Great War and pacifism expressed by the organization and its individuals, Secretary Roger Wilson requested a team of delegates be sent into Germany to survey the conditions, meet and consult with German Friends, and ensure that any relief provided by the organization adhere to the practice of impartiality.167

Then, in February 1945 when the opportunity arose to send an FRS team to Europe, RS100 arrived in Belgium where the team remained for two months and assisted in relief during German V1 raids on Antwerp. During that time, a second plea was made to lift the order. A letter to the COBSRA from the FRS in 1945, reads:

We wish to make it clear that we recognize that, functionally, our work may not lie among Germans and we should loyally observe the functional limits of work assigned to us. But in the field of human relationships we are convinced that we must maintain our request that we should not be bound by the negative aspects of the non-fraternization order. If this is not possible, then we shall have, most regretfully, to withdraw our offer of two teams. You know how sorry we shall be to do this in view of the needs of displaced persons in Germany, and we hope that a way may be found through the difficulty.168

Scholars Reid and Gemie argue that the problem of non-fraternization represented a significant difference between the UNRRA and the FRS. They write that UNRRA “workers by and large accepted the ruling that DPs merited more assistance than Germans, and . . . concentrated their efforts on the former, with only occasional interest in the later. Here, the Quakers speak with a striking near-unanimity: they were deeply concerned about the physical and spiritual condition of both Germans and DPs.”169 The FRS ultimately gained needed support from the UNRRA and military authorities to provide aid to all populations in Europe beginning in 1945.

165 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 113. 166 Roger C. Wilson, “Draft Memorandum on F.R.S. Work in Germany,” Overseas Committee: Supplementary Documents, August 22, 1944, FRS/1992/61, Friends House Library. 167 Wilson. 168 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 120. 169 Reid and Gemie, “The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People in Europe After the Second World War, 1945-48,” 230.

Finally, the UNRRA mandated that the integration of voluntary relief societies into the larger relief effort required the wearing of uniforms. During the Franco-Prussian War the FWVRC identified itself as a voluntary organization by wearing the black and red star, a practice that echoed the International Committee of the Red Cross. The difference between wearing a symbol as identification and a uniform conflicted with FRS convictions rooted in Christian pacifism.

Uniforms had even created tensions between the Society of Friends and the FAU; the FAU wore khaki and had a recognized relationship with military bodies that conflicted with the Society’s pacifist stance. Scholars point out that the FRS was nothing if not adamant about retaining its sense of independence as a pacifist voluntary organization, as well as in supporting and practicing impartiality and neutrality in the field.170 The organization concluded that despite the dangers and general unease, uniforms could prove beneficial. In his history of Quaker relief during the Second

World War, Wilson argues that uniforms have “the great merit of simplicity; nobody need bother about what to wear, and the equipment of members could become routine; secondly, in situations of uncertainty, a uniform serves for a quick identification of function; thirdly, a uniform tends to foster a group loyalty, provided that it is a uniform that everybody is happy, even proud, to wear.”171

The FRS worked through the channels afforded by the BRCS to negotiate the subject of uniforms with the War Office; the FRS would wear “Quaker grey” uniforms rather than the khaki uniforms of their colleagues in the FAU and British military. Members of the FRS have since commented on the irony of this minor change from khaki to grey. In a memoir of his work in

170 Reid and Gemie, “The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People in Europe After the Second World War, 1945-48”; Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 115; Roberts, “Place, Life Histories and the Politics of Relief: Episodes in the Life of Francesca Wilson, Humanitarian Educator Activist,” 61. 171 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 115.

overseas relief, John Eryl Hall-Williams recalled that the decision to wear Quaker grey uniforms was “rather comic” because the teams were often confused with German troops or prisoners of war.172 While providing emergency relief in Holland, Tim Evans noticed the grey uniforms had the opposite effect the Quakers wanted as the Dutch, believing the FRS team were Germans, called the FRS members pejorative names.173 Of the two challenges faced by the FRS with regards to their working relationship with UNRRA, Reid and Gemie posit that the FRS “sense of mission, and their pride in their record of service, gave them the confidence to answer back to the Allied authorities; the fact that skilled relief workers were urgently needed strengthened their position, and allowed them to win[.]”174

Conclusions

A shared ethos emerged between the FAU and FRS as established Manor Farm and Mount

Waltham, respectively, and began the process of building relief teams for overseas relief. Though both the organizations shared such elements as operating as alternative service options, an openness to volunteers from various religious and socio-economic backgrounds, and gender inclusiveness much more so in the case of FRS and reluctantly in the case of FAU, they remained equally distinct in their conceptualization and practice of relief work. The differences can be traced to the relationship each organization had to the British Society of Friends, the skills they aimed to provide their members and the structure of the training programs.

The FRS continued with traditions established by the FWVRC, which included a focus on the “second stage” of relief work as well as its commitment to independence from the army. The

172 Hall-Williams, John Eryl. 173 Evens, Tim William Henry. 174 Reid and Gemie, “The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People in Europe After the Second World War, 1945-48,” 230.

training program at Mount Waltham lasted between ten and twelve weeks, which offered a wider variety of topics such as the development of temporary or semi-permanent camps, the history of contemporary Europe, Quaker tradition and European religions, and intensive language courses.

The courses sought to prepare and train volunteers—typically those recruited to the FRS had prior experience in relief work—to become specialists in more than one area or branch of relief work.

This illustrates that those engaged in the development of Mount Waltham envisioned it as a professionalized voluntary organization.

Despite differences, the FAU and FRS worked collaboratively as they sought to prepare volunteers for the perceived crisis that would characterize the postwar period. The collaboration allowed FRS access external training opportunities developed by the FAU in areas such as driving and mechanics and mass cooking, while members of the FAU could attend Mount Waltham and supplement their training in areas considered “long-term” relief. In this way, and despite any differences between the two organizations, they were determined to train their members to be competent in the field and able to meet new relief challenges as situations arose.

The national and international organizational effort to plan for the postwar period in Europe took the shape of the COBSRA and the UNRRA. Experiences during and after the Great War shaped how those organizations conceptualized relief the second time around, particularly with the

UNRRA. The organization aimed to avoid the overlap and chaos that accompanied the presence of multiple private charity organizations acting on the ground without direction. Thus, the intergovernmental organization positioned itself as the overseeing body to direct aid, both that which would happen under military control in the form of short-term emergency relief as well as long-term rehabilitative work. The FAU and FRS, first under the auspices of the COBSRA, became integrated into the larger humanitarian machine when the BRCS took up oversight of all

small, British voluntary relief organizations. Though the FAU had a clear understanding, even precedence, for working alongside armies and thus could prepare volunteers for such work, the

FRS had more apprehension about workers in close partnership with the military. The mandate on working with military bodies and presenting members in military-style uniforms challenged the pacifist stance taken by the organization. Furthermore, the disregard for impartiality, both in the mandate of and with the Non-Fraternization Order, prompted a strong response from the FRS and a threat of withdrawal of assistance. These challenges, though negotiated and settled by the spring of 1945 when the first FRS team arrived in Germany, reveals the strong convictions and tradition the FRS held as an official body of the Society of Friends. The FRS represents, therefore, a relief organization with enduring traditions and experience from nineteenth-century philanthropic work and the new, international, intergovernmental humanitarian organizations.

PART TWO: TRAINING VOLUNTEERS

CHAPTER FOUR: MEDICAL TRAINING

In the first years of the Great War few volunteers within the FAU and FWVRC had extensive experience or training in medicine or nursing, yet much of their work included the provision of medical relief in hospitals throughout Belgium and France.175 When the FAU re- organized in 1939, home nursing became a foundational component in training. The wartime experiences of the Unit and the FWVRC, which would become the Friends Relief Service in 1943, laid the foundation for how the organizations conceptualized their role in overseas relief work and shaped the ways in which they sought to prepare volunteers during the following war. The first aid and home nursing training programs developed by the FAU and FRS centered on introducing volunteers to basic lessons and necessary skills to give emergency medical relief, treatment, and care. The two programs employed several instructional methods, including lectures, visual aids such as films and x-rays, demonstrations, and hands-on practice. Although many of the skills learned at Manor Farm and Mount Waltham would later be put to use in overseas relief, the purpose of this chapter is to assess first aid and home nursing courses in the two training camps and the ways in which volunteers continued to develop their medical skills through specialized training while providing emergency domestic relief in hospitals located throughout Great Britain between

1939 and 1945. The insistence of the FAU and the FRS for volunteers to have certificates in first aid and home nursing reflected a shift towards professionalization in humanitarian aid that began in the aftermath of the Great War.

175 Brown, The Evolution of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (1914 and 1939), 10; Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 200.

First Aid

First Aid to the Injured, the main text used at Manor Farm presented the foundations of first aid as the fundamental principles of practical medicine and surgery; thus first aid training should provide individuals with the knowledge to assist in the treatment and preservation of life after accident or sudden illness.176 Since key goals of FAU and FRS included providing emergency relief to war casualties and wounded—understood as a part of both the first and second stage of relief—the organizations required all volunteers to acquire basic training in first aid. The six-week training program at Manor Farm culminated in a series of examinations, two of which—the first aid and home nursing examinations—resulted in the attainment of certificates from the Order of

St. John of Jerusalem. In accordance with the guidelines of the Order, the two courses could only be given by a medical professional.177 Dr. Herbert Rutter oversaw first aid training and used First

Aid to the Injured. Although the program offered at Mount Waltham did not include the opportunity to obtain certificates, the FRS utilized connections to medical professionals as volunteers, including Dr. Eleanor Sawdon, Dr. Audrey Ellis, and Dr. Louis Fitch.178 Despite different camp structures and aims, the FAU and FRS courses utilized lectures, films, demonstrations and hands-on practice to instill trainees with necessary skills in first aid and home nursing.

The first two chapters in First Aid to the Injured and the first lecture in medical relief at

Mount Waltham, “First Aid,” emphasized how volunteers should access emergency situations.

They outlined in detail how an individual should approach and treat injuries at an incident or in an

176 St. John Ambulance Association, First Aid to the Injured, 39th ed. (London: The St. John Ambulance Association, 1939), 15. 177 St. John Ambulance Association, 4–6. 178 Arnold Curtis, “Memorandum on F.W.R.S. Technical Training,” August 5, 1943, FRS/1992/18, Friends House Library; Maw, The Training and Experience of a Quaker Relief Worker, 1946-1948.

emergency situation. 179 To provide the assistance required during an emergency, a first-aid provider should be observant of all casualties, noting signs and symptoms of injury or injuries, differentiating between seriousness of injuries, and obtaining a “history” of the incident from witnesses or bystanders to determine the cause of injury. Howard Champion and his collaborators argue that the types of injuries during combat differ from those encountered in civilian settings, in terms of epidemiology, mechanism of wounding, pathophysiologic trajectory post injury, and the outcome.180 For example, they found that 90 per cent of injuries occurring in the infantry are caused by penetrating missiles, which is, “a proportion very different from that observed in naval and air combat and, indeed, in civilian trauma, in which blunt trauma predominates.”181 The significance of the FAU visits to the RAMC training site to gain insights into the types of weapons and technologies used in combat cannot be understated. The treatment of injuries—those typically found in combat include severe hemorrhage and fractures—could begin after initial assessments.182

For volunteers to understand the significance of arterial and internal hemorrhages, they had to understand how the body functioned and in particular, the circulation of blood.183 Therefore, training about the work of the heart, arteries, capillaries, and veins--circulation system—became central to first aid training. Arterial hemorrhages are more dangerous than venous hemorrhages because of the pressure of the heart in pushing blood away from the heart.184 The lecture notes and

179 “Course I: Medical I First Aid I” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; St. John Ambulance Association, First Aid to the Injured, 18–26. 180 Howard R. Champion et al., “A Profile of Combat Injury,” The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care 54, no. 5 (May 2003): S13. 181 Champion et al., S13. 182 Champion et al., “A Profile of Combat Injury”; St. John Ambulance Association, First Aid to the Injured; “Course I: Medical 5 First Aid: Fractures” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 183 St. John Ambulance Association, First Aid to the Injured, 99–103. 184 “UCSB Science Line,” accessed May 30, 2019, http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1364.

handbook indicate that treatment of an arterial hemorrhage begins with applying digital pressure with fingers or thumb to the corresponding pressure point. Training imparted how to apply pressure to the correct body part to ensure blood traveling away from the heart will stop and retain access back to the heart. For example, for a wounded carotid artery, located below the angle of the lower jaw, one thumb presses on the throat towards the spine. If the jugular vein, the main vein located alongside the carotid artery, is also wounded then pressure on that vein from the other thumb is required. After the application of digital pressure, a pad and bandage can replace the finger or thumb followed by firmly dressing and covering the wound. With wounds to limbs a tourniquet can be applied, but just as with any other arterial hemorrhage pressure to the artery and not a vein is essential.

Since internal hemorrhages were more difficult to determine as an external cause is not visibly apparent, course materials offered an overview of symptoms and signs to look for: pallor of the face and lips, or cold and clammy skin; loss of strength or faintness; failing or fluttering pulse; “air hunger” indicated by a patient throwing arms, tugging at clothing around the neck, or calling for air. 185 When one or more of these signs are present in a patient, priority in transport to a hospital was recommended and volunteers were advised to lessen the effects of shock. Shock often accompanies hemorrhages and can be exacerbated by exposure and cold, loss of blood, severe pain, inattention to method of lifting or transport, and mental anxiety. Training ensured that volunteers learned to be mindful of certain indications of shock such as pallor of the face and lips, cold sweat, rapid pulse, shallow breathing, faintness, vomiting, and apathy. When waiting for transport or a medical doctor, treatments for shock consist of providing warmth from blankets or

185 St. John Ambulance Association, First Aid to the Injured, 43–45, 136–39; “Course I: Medical I First Aid I”; “Course I: Medical 3 First Aid: Burns and Shock” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library.

hot bottles, raising of lower limbs to ensure blood returns to the heart, encouraging the patient with positive words and avoiding discussion of a patient’s condition within their earshot.

The training courses also provided volunteers with insight into the treatment of fractures.

A fracture or fractures can be caused by either direct physical violence, a bone breaks at the site of impact, or indirect, a bone breaks at a distance from site of impact. According to both the handbook and FRS lecture titled, “First Aid: Fractures,” there are six types of fractures: simple, a bone is broken cleanly in one place; a compound fracture in which the ends of the bone is broken and exposed to air; complicated bone fracture that involves injury to an internal organ; a comminuted fracture when the ends of a bone are broken into several pieces; a greenstick fracture, often found in children, a crack on one side of a bone; and an impacted fracture when the end of a bone is pushed into another.186 General signs or symptoms of a fracture include pain or tenderness, swelling, loss of function, unnatural mobility, or crepitus. While waiting for hospital or medical aid, volunteers could treat a fracture first by addressing any sign of hemorrhage, then steadying and supporting the limb, placing the limb in natural position, and immobilizing the limb through the use of splints. One method of treatment discussed extensively in the Manor Farm camp diaries was the Thomas Splint.

The Thomas Splint was created in 1875 by Hugh Owen Thomas, a Welsh doctor, whose philosophy regarding the treatment of fractures was uninterrupted immobility of the joint and bone, allowing the body to heal itself naturally.187 The splint, first used for treating diseases of the knee and later for fractures of the lower limbs, was introduced for wider treatment of trauma by Thomas’ nephew Sir Robert Jones who would later become a consultant orthopedic surgeon to the British

186 “Course I: Medical 5 First Aid: Fractures”; St. John Ambulance Association, First Aid to the Injured, 61–64. 187 P.M. Robinson and M.J. O’Meara, “The Thomas Splint: Its Origins and Use in Trauma,” The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery (Br), no. 91 (2009): 540.

army during the Great War. The Thomas Splint, however, was not used as routine trauma treatment on the Western front until 1917.188 According to Colonel H.M.W. Gray, Consultant

Surgeon British Expeditionary Force, in his 1919 work, The Early Treatment of War Wounds,

“Improvements in the method of splinting compound fractures of the femur, and the use of the

Thomas’ splint at a point much farther foreward than was formerly considered possible, have led to a reduction of the mortality rate in cases of this nature of at least 30 per cent.”189 The simple design of the splint allowed for easy application in the field.

Lectures at Manor Farm and Mount Waltham were often complimented with visual aids such as medical films, x-rays, and human skeletons. Mid-century pedagogical scholarship suggested visual aids as an effective supplement to traditional approaches of education to provide vivid and lasting impressions, strengthen retention and promote increased knowledge of detailed concepts, motivation, and variety.190 For visual aids to be effective as a classroom tool, however, they should not be used as a substitute but instead carefully integrated and clearly identified by the instructor. A diarist from the Sixteenth Camp reflected on a film used by Dr. Rutter in his lecture:

The films were prefaced by remarks by Dr. Rutter, who answered any questions that were asked, and they included illustrations of reductions of fractures of Tibia and Fibula, Radius and Ulna, Clavicle, femur and spine. Some surgical carpentry, when steel nails were driven through the heel and femur, caused alternatively amusement, amazement and a slight sinking feeling[.]191

Though there is an element of humor in the entry, that Dr. Rutter integrated the film as a visual aid on fractures and surgery for volunteers who are unfamiliar with such conditions or processes, the diarist clearly lists the bones illustrated as well as the procedures conducted in the film and

188 Robinson and O’Meara, 541. 189 H.M.W. Gray, The Early Treatment of War Wounds (London: Oxford University Press, 1919), 49. 190 James S. Kinder, “Visual Aids in Education,” Review of Educational Research, General Aspects of Instruction: Learning, Teaching, and the Curriculum, 12, no. 3 (June 1942): 337; Ted Davis, “Visual-Aids Why, What, Where?,” Training and Development Journal 28, no. 9 (1974): 22. 191 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).”

illustrations, which suggests retainment of the information by the trainee. Basic knowledge of human anatomy is significant for anyone preparing to provide any amount of first aid, as well as for those who would follow their training at Manor Farm with on-site training at a hospital. Since most of the men were not trained medical professionals, the sensory experience of film afforded the trainees with insight on techniques employed during a surgery and into experience of, and in this case empathy with, the patient. In the case of fractures, as bones can break in a variety of places and angles, having a visual representation by x-ray or human skeleton allowed trainees to understand the complexity of a break and how to best set a break to ensure proper healing.

Not all trainees, however, found the films shown at Manor Farm beneficial. In a letter to the FAU Chronicle on April 30, 1943, Ian Nicholson commented on first aid and hospital training at Manor Farm. He argued that films, particularly those not in color, did not necessarily lend to overall training given the limited time volunteers spend training at the camp. He added, however, color films prepare members for what they can expect from surgery by “making the whole thing much more gruesome than it really is.”192 The lectures and demonstrations given by Dr. Rutter could not give trainees insight into all aspects of first aid or the severity of certain injuries they might confront once in the field; thus, the films, as pointed out by Nicholson, gave trainees at the very least a visual of what to expect in extreme instances.

Home Nursing

In conjunction with first aid, trainees were introduced to basic home nursing. In contrast to first aid, home nursing is the care and treatment of an individual under the supervision of a doctor

192 Friends Ambulance Unit, “Friends Ambulance Unit Chronicle” (London: Friends Ambulance Unit, April 30, 1943), PERS B/F7/AMB/2, Friends House Library.

at home.193 At Manor Farm, Sister Margaret Gibbs oversaw training in home nursing. The lessons consisted of lectures and demonstrations in the application of roller bandaging, the circulation and lymphatic system, bed laying, fevers, medicine, rehabilitation, poultices and infectious diseases.194

Each lesson corresponded to the required handbook, Home Nursing, that outlined the course in a syllabus, detailed nursing practice and procedure accompanied by illustrations and review questions at the end of each chapter, and concluded with a glossary of terminology. Each chapter in the handbook discusses specific aspects to nursing like “The Sick-Room,” “Methods of

Treatment,” “The Daily Routine,” and “Observation of the Sick.” Together, chapters such as these outlines how a nurse should prepare and maintain a clean room, the procedures and treatments for illnesses, and the importance of close observation and clear reporting on the condition of the patient.

The lessons in home nursing given at Mount Waltham primarily concern infectious disease, though the amount of detail in lectures at Mount Waltham surpassed those provided by the handbook. In addition, the lessons at home nursing at Manor Farm focused on the care of patients in hospitals whereas those at Mount Waltham are concentrated on displaced persons camps. This reflects the differences between how the FAU and FRS conceptualized their position in relief. First, during the Great War the FAU worked primarily in hospitals nursing wounded soldiers and civilians, whereas the FWVRC worked extensively among civilians in refugee camps and in rehabilitation efforts in villages and towns. Second, as evidence of increased professionalization, the FAU necessitated St. John Ambulance Association certificates from all trainees attending

Manor Farm and because of the mandate and regulations that accompanied the issuing of these certificates, every trainee was required to learn the official home nursing program. As previously

193 St. John Ambulance Association, Home Nursing, 4th ed. (London: The St. John Ambulance Association, 1937), 11. 194 “Camp Diaries (Northfield)”; Coates, “Private Papers of RN Coates”; Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946.

mentioned, Mount Waltham did not incorporate the certificate program into the training course but still supported professionalization by insisting all members who wanted to work overseas obtain the certificates.

Examinations

The first aid and home nursing examinations were, for many of the trainees at Manor Farm, a source of stress and anxiety.195 Preparation for the exam included practicing procedures and studying the first aid textbooks. The authorized textbooks of the Order of St. John included a series of questions after each chapter that corresponded to questions on the exam. On the day of the examination for the Sixteenth Camp, one trainee noted that Dr. Rutter “had a great abundance of sarcastic remarks and an admirable memory – he could not only tell what page of the Handbook a certain fact could be found but the position of it on the page!!”196 The textbooks served as indispensable guides for those teaching the first aid and home nursing courses, as well as for those preparing for the examinations. As the FAU, as well as FRS, trainees were not medical professionals, the detailed descriptions, and visuals on specific aspects of first aid and home nursing prepared trainees for the worst in the absence of advanced medical knowledge.

The examinations were not, however, without institutional challenges. A diary entry by a training officer at the Eighteenth Camp suggests the trainees understood the results of the examination as the culmination of their training rather than as a part of the overall learning process.

The entry reads: “The exam showed up a lack of book learning, particularly on fevers, and should help to concentrate people’s energies on this for this last revision week. There is a schoolboy tendency to value marks for their own sake instead of treating the exam as one of the steps in

195 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).” 196 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).”

learning home nursing; but we are trying to combat this.” 197 The training officer has two interconnecting observations: first, trainees reflected less on their reading material for the course; second, trainees were more interested in the loss of points and less in why they lost points. Though it is difficult to determine whether this was a problem throughout all of the camps, this observation reflects the institutional emphasis on the examination as an outcome of learning, as well as professionalization in relief work.

Other trainees expressed apprehension about the need for training courses and attainment of certificates in home nursing altogether. In a letter to the FAU Chronicle in March 27, 1943, Victor

L. Menage wrote, “Is it essential for us to take the Home Nursing Certificate? Is it not more desirable to use the textbook as a foundation only, cutting extraneous chapters at discretion and supplementing the theory with practical demonstration on laying up trolleys and trays, the use of oxygen apparatus, urine-testing etc?”198 In a response to Menage, Ian Nicolson wrote:

I don’t think we can improve the existing system very much. The St. John courses may contain a lot of matter that is later found to be useless, but the certificates have their value. In this exam ridden country of our degrees, diplomas and certificates carry some weight. The represent some degree of knowledge and are useful things when approaching authorities. Camp is not the place to start an intensive medical course.199

Nicolson’s response was astute. The obtainment of a certificate following a course and examination is evidence of the knowledge and skills gained during a course and tested through examination. The certificate, then, signifies to authorities that the individual has the skills needed to perform the task before them according to an agreed upon criterion. Menage stresses “practical demonstration” and offers examples, yet, as Nicolson suggests, Manor Farm could not afford the time or space to provide such training. The Home Nursing certificate was a requirement for

197 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).” 198 Friends Ambulance Unit, “Friends Ambulance Unit Chronicle” (London: Friends Ambulance Unit, March 27, 1943), PERS B/F7/AMB/2, Friends House Library. 199 Friends Ambulance Unit, “Friends Ambulance Unit Chronicle,” April 30, 1943.

providing overseas relief, as well as for those wanting to receive specialized training in London hospitals.

Drawing on the traditions and experience of the FWVRC in shelter work, medical knowledge was not initially a priority in the training program. After discussion, however, the FRS decided that for any volunteer looking to work overseas, and possibly working under the auspices of the British Red Cross, a certificate in first aid was mandatory and a certificate in home nursing was preferable but not required. For members to train, sit examinations, and obtain a certificate, the FRS suggested that any of their members interested in overseas service attend the FAU training camp at Northfield, attend special courses in London or public courses in nearby towns. In August

1943, it was decided volunteers to the third camp could not participate if they did not obtain the certificates. To help volunteers gain the required certificates, Dr. Louis Fitch began a six-week course in first aid for individuals at Mount Waltham September 1943. The insistence by the FRS that volunteers and trainees obtain certificates, at least in first aid, reflected the attitude among the

FAU that professionalization in emergency and medical relief was paramount.

Hospital Training and Domestic Relief

In October 1939, Paul Cadbury contacted Dr. Michael Vaizey at the London Hospital and

Dr. Henry Wilson, a psychiatrist at the London Hospital, to discuss the possibility of transferring

FAU members to hospitals throughout London for professionalized as well as specialized training.

The interest of the FAU was fueled with the conclusion of the First Camp in November 1939 as the “Phoney War” did not present any immediate need for the Unit in overseas relief. Both Dr.

Vaizey and Dr. Wilson expressed interest in assisting the Unit; Dr. Wilson agreed to construct an outline of necessary training and Dr. Vaizey, uninterested in joining the RAMC, expressed interest

in taking responsibility on the medical staff of the FAU.200 Following these initial discussions,

Peter Hume and Alan Dickenson traveled to London to arrange for the training of men in various hospitals as they waited for openings in overseas relief.

Over the course of the war, approximately eighty-three hospitals trained members of the

FAU, although there were never more than twenty-eight that did so at the same time.201 Hospitals in which the men were sent included the London County Council (LCC) Hospitals of Bethnal

Green, Hackney, Hammersmith, and Lewisham, the Selly Oak and Queen Mary hospitals in

Birmingham, and hospitals as far north as Bangour Hospital in Scotland. After some negotiation and maneuvering, the London Hospital became the home base for training and working the FAU volunteers. According to Telga Davies, the FAU theoretically distinguished between “training” and “working” hospitals. In training hospitals, like those of the LCC, men were accepted as supernumeraries for medical training on wards, operating theatres, and in departments such as X- ray, dispensary, out-patient, and pathological laboratories.202 Training hospitals had an established routine, discipline, and duties of tradition; yet, when the Blitz started those hospitals were evacuated and fashioned into Casualty Clearing Stations until the summer of 1941.203

In contrast, hospitals designated as working hospitals, such as the Emergency Medical

Service hospitals newly created in 1940 and 1941, welcomed volunteers to assist with manual work or as porters. Davies argues the volunteers who entered working hospitals were quickly accepted as “an essential part of the hospital.”204 Despite the distinctions made between training

200 Andrew Morland, “Extract from Letter Received from Dr. Andrew Morland,” September 29, 1939, MSS 876/FAU/1948/2/2, Friends House Library. 201 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the FAU in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 327. 202 Davies, 327. 203 Davies, 327. 204 Davies, 328.

and working hospitals, in practice the volunteers who were eager to help in any manner and in an assortment of duties or working positions were considered the most successful.205

Groups of six to fifteen men went to hospitals and worked under the direction of a section leader, who organized his team and was responsible to the authorities and the Hospitals Office at

Gordon Square. Michael Cadbury later suggested that the quality of section leader had an impact on the training provided: “[H]e had to win the confidence of the matron, doctors and staff and avoid the jealousy of nurses and sisters, for we were doing things they couldn’t allow their own nurses to do.”206 The first volunteers sent into hospitals could expect to work and train for a period of two to three months, however, over time that period of training and working was extended to six months on account of needs within the hospitals.207

Despite limited medical knowledge, usually only the lessons in first aid and home nursing from Manor Farm, the FAU volunteers were keen to provide service wherever and in whatever form it was needed, and the understaffed hospitals incorporated them into their work. Deryck

Moore came to the FAU in 1944 with experience working as a mechanic. After his six-week training at Manor Farm, Moore continued on to Hammersmith Hospital where he aided doctors and nurses with German V2 victims. During his time at the hospital, Moore made an analogy between the “insides of cars and insides of humans.” He suggested, “The blood pressure is the oil pressure. […] The only thing is, it’s sometimes better to make mistakes on cars diagnosis than it is on human beings.”208 Similarly, upon arrival at Bethnal Green, Nev Coates reported to the Sister on Out Patients, who asked him if he had been in a hospital before to which he replied, “Yes, to

205 Davies, 328. 206 Smith, Pacifists in Action, 65. 207 Cadbury, Michael H. 208 Moore, Deryck Rolfe, interview by Lyn Smith, August 9, 1989, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80010661.

have my tonsils out.” The Sister retorted, “I mean to work, stupid.” Coates told her that he had not, that he just came to the hospital from a training camp. She told him, “Oh Lord, you’d better polish the brasses on the doors, and generally clean up.”209 Evidently, hospitals always had work of some sort for the volunteers.

Several members recall that doctors and nurses at the hospitals were willing to teach the basics or, in some instances, sophisticated medical procedures. Eventually, members carried

“training cards” that had a list of skills, which were checked off by nurses as members proved their proficiency at each.210 Required skills listed on the cards included bed-making, catheterization, enemata, cleaning of wounds and dressings, giving injections, removing stiches, testing urine, and knowledge of various medical instruments.211 Clifford Barnard worked and trained at Lewisham

Hospital in 1943 and then at Barnsley Hall E.M.S. Hospital in 1944. In a letter to his parents,

Barnard writes of his experience at Lewisham Hospital, “Work on the ward is much the same, but

I have been to theatre on three occasions now. I simply stand at the back and watch, but it is useful experience – pretty routine ops. I gather, appendectomy, colostomy and the resetting of a broken jaw.”212 Once transferred to Barnsley Hall E.M.S. Hospital, Barnard continued work both on wards and in theatres cleaning, watching operations, and assisting the anesthetist during operations in

“odd jobs.”213 Based on experiences during the Great War, the FAU believed that volunteers with experience as porters and on hospital wards helped with the re-establishment of hospitals during and in the aftermath of war when personnel was limited.

209 Coates, “Private Papers of RN Coates.” 210 A. Telga Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the FAU in the Second World War, 1939-1946 (London: Headley Brothers, 1947), 329. 211 Davies, 329. 212 Clifford Barnard, Binding the Wounds of War: A Young Relief Worker’s Letters Home 1943-47 (London: Pronoun Press, 2010), 31. 213 Barnard, 33.

The women who trained with the FAU at Barmoor began working and training in hospitals beginning in 1941. In a Barmoor newsletter, Joan Waddington wrote that in her first five weeks training at Bethnall Green Hospital she had been posted to an “ordinary ward,” which then followed with a posting to “Casualty.” During her first week, she watched a hernia operation in the theatre and a few days after she had an opportunity to learn gross anatomy:

[O]ne of the Students cut up a brain for us and pointed out which parts controlled the hearing, the sight, which were the higher centres and so on. According to the First Aid book the brain is the seat of intellect, the emotions and the will, but as it’s a thing that looks rather like a soft cauliflower, I find all that rather hard to realise. I’ve seen one post mortem, and I don’t think I would like to see another. The smell was really the worst part of it, but apart from that it was quite interesting.214

The war, both at home and overseas, also provided the Unit men working and training in hospitals with experience. Nev Coates, posted to Bethnall Green in London, was called to action when the Luftwaffe began an attack on August 24, 1940. The first air raid warning produced no bombing; only a few hours later, however, Coates was urged to take cover on the floor. He recalled,

“I don’t know how long it took me but I was under the bed before the explosion […] There had been no air raid warning, but the planes could be heard, and more bombs.”215 Along with the other volunteers and staff, the hospital was made ready for casualties who arrived nearly forty-five minutes after the attack: “Our job was to unload the ambulances, put the stretchers onto trolleys, and take them into the receiving room where they are treated by doctors and nurses, and then we wheel them to a ward, unless they are to be operated on immediately, where they are washed and sedated.”216 The Unit put their lessons and practice “call-outs” from Manor Farm to use as the

214 “F.A.U. Women’s Section News Letter.” 215 Nev Coates, “From the London Blitz to the Champs Elysees: An Account of Service with the Friends Ambulance Unit, 1940-1945,” n.d., 9, 98/10/1, Imperial War Museum, accessed July 26, 2016. 216 Coates, 9–10.

attack required quick, decisive response to incoming casualties. The men also learned the significance of triage and differentiating between injuries.

Similarly, Clifford Barnard who was posted to a military hospital, Ronkswood Hospital in

Worcester, responded to incoming casualties following the D-Day attacks in June 1944. Barnard worked alongside “a mixture of conchies, paid civilians and some ex-soldiers who were invalided out for mental reasons,” on an emergency basis when convoys brought wounded soldiers to the hospital from the nearby railway station.217 In a letter home dated June 25, 1944, he described his work:

The hospital is modern and well equipped and the work not unpleasant, in between our stretcher bearing I work on X-ray, mainly developing in the dark room. Our hours are 9.00 to 5.00, but the convoys always come in after dark […] and getting them into bed or X- rayed for ops the following day can take well into the night. We have had three convoys so far with over 50 patients on each occasion. It is rather depressing to see stretcher after stretcher going in with so many young men, some maybe maimed for life.218

Like Coates, Barnard put his training in “call-outs” to use, but also gained experience in the X-ray department and continued his work there into August 1944 before being transferred to theatre work.

Importantly, working and training at a military hospital gave Barnard first-hand experience with wounded soldiers and the opportunity to hear stories from the front; in the same letter as above,

Barnard details the instructions paratroopers were given regarding the taking of prisoners. The paratroopers noted that with no means of “coping with them” behind the lines, they shot them rather than take them prisoner. This prompted criticism from Barnard. He writes emphatically, “So much for the Geneva Convention!”219 This, as well as other stories related by Barnard, are not the stories he or his family would have been reading in the daily newspapers. Letters such as this

217 Barnard, Binding the Wounds of War: A Young Relief Worker’s Letters Home 1943-47, 37. 218 Barnard, 38. 219 Barnard, 38.

offered an alternative perspective—one that did not shy away from the grisly and inhumane nature of war—to those that presented war in terms of patriotism, duty, and sacrifice.

In the same vein, the skills gained in hospitals often extended beyond work as orderlies, porters, or nurses as men were often confronted with the grim reality of medicine – death and the dying. Brian Locke, posted to Hackney Hospital after training with the Fifteenth Camp, noted,

“One learnt much from being with the dying, such that holding the hand of a violent, aged, foul- mouthed, […] syphilitic, or rushing out for a finger-bowl for a personal last rite when the specialized rabbi could not be found, or reading for the last time (of many) a letter from a predeceased daughter, really could ease the end, and especially its pain.”220 Similarly, Stephen

Hubert Peet, who trained at Bethnal Green Hospital in a men’s geriatric ward, remembered the first time he was with someone who died. Along with a nurse, Peet was told to lay the individual out, which neither had experience doing. He states, “This is where I felt I was beginning to understand about medical things, about death. It was a very interesting time too, with those old people. So that became medical training.”221

When the FAU first sent men into hospitals, there had been instances of hostility towards the volunteers. To be sure, as increased numbers of able-bodied men left for war overseas and the home front itself became a war zone, the FAU volunteers came to be appreciated for the help they could give. Michael Cadbury recalled that in the early days, “One or two of the doctors refused to have us on their wards. One or two sisters made life hell for us ‘shirkers.’”222 Lyn Smith found that according to one FAU volunteer at the Broadgreen Hospital in Liverpool, the Registrar coined the phrase “Futile And Useless” for the original initials and another volunteer recalled an incident

220 Brian Locke, “An Unimportant Member of the FAU,” January 3, 1993, MISC 256/1/3, Imperial War Museum. 221 Peet, Stephen Hubert. 222 Smith, Pacifists in Action, 64.

when a patient asked if the “F.A.U.” embroidered on his chest was an abbreviation for “Fuck All

Use.”223 Over time the hostility decreased as the FAU, both the individuals within it and the organization as a whole, became increasingly recognized as reliable and serviceable, and could provide assistance on wards and with patients. Cadbury notes, “Once they got the colour of our eyes, they were more understanding and knew that we weren’t just shirkers, that we really wanted to help.”224 David Rudd trained at the Hammersmith Hospital in London and felt there was a level of trust established between himself and the staff.225 During his stay at the Poplar Hospital, Bernard

Fisher fondly recalled the female nurses having “pluck.” The nurses played an innocent “April

Fool’s Joke” on the men by reporting a casualty situation in the early hours of the morning, when there was none, and watched the FAU men rush and scramble to assist.226

In contrast to the FAU, the FRS did not envision itself as an emergency medical relief unit nor did the organization have official relationships with London hospitals to provide members with additional or specialized training. The FRS, however, envisioned its work to be focused on the care and rehabilitation of DPs, which would require some specialized medical training. An FRS memorandum on personnel and training reads:

The tendency amongst starved people to contract disease tends at first to increase rather than decrease when better food, increased rest and general care are provided. Thus medical knowledge will be as necessary for Stage 2 as for Stage 1. Moreover, certain specialized medical knowledge may be invaluable both for work in communities of displaced persons and for relief work generally, e.g. knowledge of deficiency disease, scabies, disinfestation (ordinary and typhus), V.D., midwifery.227

223 Smith, 70, 78. 224 Smith, 64. 225 Rudd, David. 226 Fisher, Bernard K., interview by Lyn Smith, March 29, 1989, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80010431. 227 Friends War Relief Service, “Overseas Developments, Personnel & Training,” 1943, FRS/1992/18, Friends House Library.

The FRS did not aim to train members as doctors or nurses, but rather maintained that some medical knowledge was better than none at all—a lesson learned from the experience of the

FWVRC during the Great War.

As the FAU and FRS worked collaboratively at Mount Waltham, a suggestion was made that when FAU members were withdrawn from their posts at various hospitals, FRS members might begin to fill those spaces. In 1943, the FRS reasoned that both the individuals within the organization as well as hospitals would benefit from either a mixed FAU and FRS section or sending just FRS members to hospitals in need of assistance. By mid-1943, the FRS recommended six FRS members to undertake hospital training during the winter of 1943-1944 under the charge of FAU member, Ian Nicholson. In that same report, the FRS noted that the inclusion of FRS members in the hospital section at Lichfield was successful and other FRS members interested in specialized training might also be sent into hospital sections.228 Though goals were different, the

FRS also benefitted from hospital training and increased professionalization in relief work.

Conclusions

The ways in which the FAU and FRS trained volunteers in first aid and home nursing reflected how the two organizations perceived their role in overseas relief work as well as the extent to which they embraced and integrated professionalization into their organizations. After worked closely with military bodies, doctors, and nurses in the field during the Great War, the

FAU understood their role in postwar relief to fall within the parameters of the first stage of relief and therefore emphasized the role and value of first aid and nursing in the training program at

Manor Farm. The extensiveness of information, level of detail provided in lectures, and hands-on

228 Curtis, “Memorandum on F.W.R.S. Technical Training.”

practice illustrates the belief within the FAU that ambulance services and emergency medical relief would be a priority and main area of work for members during and after the war. When an immediate need for overseas ambulance services did not present itself, the Unit sought out additional medical training for the members in hospitals located throughout England and Scotland, and in 1939 that work became essential with the onslaught of the Battle of Britain and Blitz on

London.

In contrast, the FRS provided detailed instruction and integrated hands-on practice for volunteers, but not nearly to the same extent as the FAU despite having a longer training period.

The FRS valued the role of medical relief training, but also understood their larger role in relief would extend well beyond the first stage of emergency relief and thus necessitated a wider variety and range of themes and skill sets in their training at Mount Waltham. The FRS did, however, appreciated the benefits of additional or specialized training that had been afforded to the FAU through their work and training in hospitals, and the FRS negotiated with the FAU to provide openings for FRS members to enhance their knowledge and experience in medical training.

It should also be emphasized that neither organization sought to train volunteers as medical professionals, rather they focused on the skills and knowledge to differentiate and triage wounds, providing treatment and care to injured or wounded patients until a medical doctor arrived in the field or in a hospital. In contrast to past practices, however, the new requirement of obtaining St.

John Ambulance certificates in first aid and home nursing legitimized the organizations as having professionally trained volunteers, thus echoing the larger attitude towards the professionalization of relief organizations. The FAU and FRS took different approaches in how they supported the attainment of certificates by volunteers. The FAU centered training at Manor Farm on achieving certification and at the end of a six-week camp the trainees sat an examination that determined

whether or not they acquired the basic skills needed for such work and could walk from the camp with certificates in-hand. Rather than incorporating the St. John Ambulance Association course and certificate into the course at Mount Waltham, the FRS required volunteers to obtain the certificate from outside institutions or sources. The certificates, for both organizations, ultimately served as evidence that their volunteers could be incorporated into the British Red Cross following the creation of COBSRA.

CHAPTER FIVE: INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND (MAL)NUTRITION

The damages and shortages to hospital facilities and transportation, as well as the shortage of doctors, nurses, and inability of public health services to confront famine and starvation epidemics in the aftermath of the Great War prompted international, national, and local voluntary aid organizations into action and influenced scientific studies and report gathering in famine areas to both justify humanitarian activity to those at home as well as underscore the increasingly scientific approach to humanitarian aid. Military planners and voluntary organizations alike shared in their concern for the likelihood of postwar epidemics and famine that would follow on the heels of wartime destruction, mass migration, and displacement of millions of populations.

In 1945, Francesca Wilson wrote of her experiences as a relief worker with the British

Quakers in Europe during and after the Great War. In a hopeful remark regarding the postwar period, she said, “The immense advance in medical knowledge makes the combating of epidemic much easier this time than last.”229 Written in her Advice for Relief Workers, her comment reflected a larger attitude among international relief agencies and small voluntary relief organizations alike—to plan for the postwar public health crises and utilize all sources available to inform that planning. By assessing the lessons given at Manor Farm and Mount Waltham on the topics of infectious diseases and nutrition, this chapter will highlight how the FAU and FRS drew on their past experiences as well as contemporary reports and research on disease and famine to inform and prepare volunteers for what to expect and how to respond to conditions in Europe. The first section, covering infectious diseases, examines how the training programs introduced volunteers to tuberculosis, typhus, and venereal diseases through the processes of identification, prevention,

229 Wilson, “Advice to Relief Workers: Based on Personal Experience in the Field,” 14.

and treatment. The second section, on nutrition, is a discussion on calories, vitamins, and methods of mass cooking used to minimize and address the problem of postwar malnutrition and epidemics.

Identifying Infectious Diseases

The movement of millions of refugees and DPs, coupled with a lack of proper sanitation and basic nutrition, increased not only the susceptibility of infectious disease, but also the likelihood of such diseases becoming epidemic or even pandemic. Training in the control, prevention, and treatment of infectious diseases spanned various lectures and drew on a variety of reading materials, both suggested (FRS) and required (FAU). Trainees needed to understand the relationship between disease and transmission, the importance of field hygiene and sanitation, and the impact of malnutrition on resistance to and rehabilitation from certain diseases. Manor Farm and Mount Waltham covered diseases ranging from “the communicable group to those borne by animals and insects,”230 including small-pox, chicken-pox, dysentery and cholera, scabies and impetigo, mumps, and influenza. Training, however, emphasized diseases exacerbated by wartime conditions such as malaria, typhus, typhoid, tuberculosis, and venereal diseases. As these diseases had been a primary concern, therefore the examples throughout this chapter will be drawn from the lecture notes, readings, contemporary research, and reports regarding those specific diseases.

The FAU and FRS integrated first-hand experience from the Great War and interwar years and contemporary research on infectious diseases to support their assessment and training in diseases. A particular case of relief work conducted by the FAU in the winter of 1914 and 1915 served as an example of how to address a community infected with disease. The town of Ypres experienced heavy bombardment, which destroyed the local water supply and produced a typhoid

230 “Camp Diaries (Northfield)”; St. John Ambulance Association, Home Nursing; “Notes for Relief Workers” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library.

epidemic among the population. When the FAU team came to the town to assist in medical relief, it confronted the epidemic and took measures to both treat and prevent the disease from spreading.

In “A Story of the Work of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit,” Geoffrey Winthrop Young details the inoculations, implementation of field hygienic measures, and use of surveys by the Unit members in the fight against typhoid:

Inoculation stations were established in the two, and subsequently extended over all the neighbouring districts. Over 11,000 first and over 10,000 second inoculations have thus been administered; the latter figure is a tribute to the confidence felt in our doctors. Water purification stations, to supply Chlorinated water, were established in the town and neighbouring villages. From seven of these stations as much as seventeen thousand gallons of purified water have been supplied in a single day. One of our men makes the rounds every day and tests the barrel. […] Another measure, of an original character, has been the ‘house-to-house search’ for typhoid cases and insanitary conditions. A selected party, which has had to acquire a proficiency in Flemish, has inspected every house in town, village and rural district over a large area. […] Their work has involved an immense labour of map-making and accurate collation.231

Typhoid (Enteric Fever) and paratyphoid are infectious germs ingested through the mouth and spread through water, milk, and food contaminated with bacteria called Salmonella Typhi or

Paratyphi passed in feces of infected people, with typhoid considered the more serious of the two diseases.232 As shown, the violent destruction of the town’s infrastructure, the breakdown of public health measures, close quarters and unsanitary living conditions during the conflict enabled the spread of typhoid among soldiers and civilians. It should also be pointed out that the team utilized map making to ensure the entirety of the population received assistance and inoculations; Manor

Farm included map-making in its training program and trainees took an examination to demonstrate proficiency.233

231 Geoffrey Winthrop Young, “A Story of the Work of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit” (London: Newnham, Cowell & Gripper LTD, 1915), 18. 232 “Typhoid Fever,” Mayo Clinic, July 31, 2018, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/typhoid- fever/symptoms-causes/syc-20378661. 233 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).”

Though first-hand experiences could serve as learning experiences on both what to do and what not to do, Manor Farm and Mount Waltham brought in field experts to give lectures on specific topics and utilized contemporary research, reports, and tools to inform trainees on the current status of public health in Europe. Much like the attitude towards professionalization of voluntary organizations, that the FAU and FRS incorporated experts and current research and data on disease and its transmission to reflect the confidence contemporaries placed on both expertise and scientific approaches to relief work. In this case, the camp diaries, training lectures, and reading materials have a pronounced use of medical jargon and offer acute detail on the diseases.

This is most evident in how the FAU and FRS covered basic terminology regarding disease and its transmission.

For example, the lectures identify the agents of disease that include bacteria, fungi, protozoa, virus, and metazoa or parasite, and transmission of disease is either through direct or indirect contact and taken into the body either through inhalation, ingestion, or inoculation. 234 For example, tuberculosis (TB), a “social disease,” is a bacterial infection spread through the inhalation of the tubercle bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. With Mycobacterium bovis, the disease is spread through contaminated cow milk and affects the bones and gastro-intestinal tract.235 Whereas the bacteria Rickettsia prowazekii that is epidemic or exanthematic typhus—“the old gaol-fever”— spreads though an infected louse and its excreta, and not through human-to-human contact. Winter was considered prime typhus season due to “the enterprising louse, who wants to take up a new housing estate, then finds his opportunities, since it is in winter that people wash and change their

234 St. John Ambulance Association, Home Nursing, 172–78, 180–200; “Course I: Medical 14 Typhoid and Dysentery” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 235 “Course I: Medical 16 Respiratory Infections” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; “Basic TB Facts | TB | CDC,” December 11, 2018, https://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/basics/default.htm; Center for Disease Control, “Centennial: Koch’s Discovery of the Tubercle Bacillus,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 31, no. 10 (March 19, 1982): 121–23.

clothes less, and huddle together round the stove more; that is the opportunity for the louse to breed and move about.”236 According to “Disease and its Transmission,” consideration of points of transmission and agents aid in determining approach to treatment and prevention of areas at risk of or experiencing an epidemic.

Though contemporaries associated TB, typhus, and venereal diseases with wartime conditions, they also linked the prevalence and spread of such diseases to certain demographics.

In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century, TB, or consumption, was romanticized as a disease of the famous artists, writers, and intellectuals. Thomas M. Daniel points out, “The wan and pallid facies of the victim of tuberculosis were thought to be attractive.”237 With the rise of the

Industrial Revolution the romanticism associated with consumption quickly dissipated as the disease became more prevalent among working-class populations whose work entailed long days in overcrowded and unsanitary factories and the disease became linked to the “unsavory,” working poor, and individuals inclined to immoral habits. This attitude is reflected in one lecture at Mount

Waltham, which indicated the disease is “always associated with poverty.”238 Contemporaries also linked the prevalence of venereal disease during war to discourses regarding promiscuity, sex, the breakup of traditional families, mass movement of populations, emotional strains heightened during war, and “the unnatural excitement of war and alcoholism.” 239 The creation of such associations are not unprecedented, however, in the field of humanitarian relief the coupling of disease with certain populations lends to the risk of stigmatization or to the detriment of impartial relief.

236 Neville M. Goodman, “Health in Europe,” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) 20, no. 4 (1944): 476. 237 Thomas M. Daniel, “The History of Tuberculosis,” Respiratory Medicine 100 (2006): 1864. 238 “Course I: Medical 16 Respiratory Infections.” 239 “Course I: Medical 15 Diseases of the Central Nervous System and Venereal Disease” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; Goodman, “Health in Europe,” 3.

Second, trainees needed to know how to differentiate between various stages of disease development. Both training programs covered the six stages of disease and definitions for each: infection; incubation; invasion; eruption; defervescence; and convalescence. For instance, the

“incubation” period varies with different diseases and even among individual cases of the same diseases, though Home Nursing notes incubation “is generally marked by a train of warning symptoms – listlessness, apathy, poor appetite and a general feeling of indisposition which, though individually they may seem unimportant, are significant when occurring together and gradually increasing.”240 This period is distinctive from “invasion,” which is the presence of distinctive symptoms related to a particular disease. As diseases have different symptoms, the correct identification of symptoms in this stage allows for a diagnosis by a doctor and the application of treatment and prevention.

The identification of a disease based on symptoms could be difficult. A Mount Waltham lecture notes the incubation period for typhus is twelve days, which means an individual may be infected but not showing symptoms. Once invasion occurs, the clinical features that accompany typhus include chilliness and severe headaches, increased fatigue by mental and physical effort, delirium and nightmares, tremor of the tongue and that eventually becomes swollen and brown, and pain in limbs. The challenge to identifying typhus, however, is that the symptoms often resembles influenza in the initial stages.241

For other diseases, such as syphilis or gonorrhea, the challenge of identification through symptoms lay in its presentation between the sexes. The first symptom of syphilis is a sore or chancre that appears at the site of inoculation, which appears after an incubation period of two to

240 St. John Ambulance Association, Home Nursing, 180–81. 241 “Course I: Medical 13 Typhus” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library.

three weeks and is more visible in men than in women. Two to three months after infection, a rash, much like a rash of other infectious diseases appears, white mucous patches appear on mucous membranes of the mouth, which might be accompanied by bouts of sickness or fever. Tertiary symptoms develop at any time after the first year of infection and those symptoms include

“myocarditis, aneurism or dilation of a large blood vessel, ulceration of the skin or other tissues, infection of the nervous system—e.g. locomotor ataxia or general paralysis of the insane.”242 The symptoms of gonorrhea appear within the first week and, similar to syphilis, female patients are often overlooked and men often experience more pain than women. The lecture notes read, “The acute stage of the disease may be followed by complications due to the infection spreading back into the reproductive organs in the female or to the glands in the male. The infection occasionally spreads to joints, and the eyes develop a serious infection if the gonococcus is introduced into them.”243 Trainees would have gone into the field knowing that special attention be given to women during initial medical surveys, as symptoms are less visible and generally overlooked.

Treatment and Prevention of Infectious Diseases

When a relief worker or team assisted in the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases, there were several components to take into consideration. The lecture, “Medical Relief Surveying,” offered at Mount Waltham describes the “medical survey” and its value in the treatment and prevention of epidemics. Two factors the trainee needed to consider included the attack and defense of disease. The attack of disease depended on the virulence of the organism causing disease and the amount of organisms attacking, whereas defense, or resistance, is dependent on food,

242 “Course I: Medical 15 Diseases of the Central Nervous System and Venereal Disease.” 243 “Course I: Medical 15 Diseases of the Central Nervous System and Venereal Disease.”

clothing, shelter and fuel, sleep, and work conditions.244 Therefore, the first steps in development of a medical survey consisted of collecting information on the number of people living in an area, condition and quality of water supplies, physical geography and history of the area, pre-war set- up of local government, and on public health services and standards.

The creation of a survey relied on observing the area, investigations, and data and report collecting. When contacting either military occupation authorities, local government authorities or local priests, the information should include data on nutrition, transport services, agriculture, and social services. As noted in the lecture, the relationship between the treatment and prevention of diseases was connected to the larger welfare of a community:

The way in which medical problems affect other aspects of local life and vice versa is clearly seen in the study of some of the common effects of an outbreak of typhus. The tendency of people to avoid contact with other people and the tendency to panic evacuation, generally cause the complete disruption of the local economy simply as a result of typhus epidemic.245

Relief workers needed to be aware of all aspects of a society, including the political, social, and economic make-up. In doing so, the team or teams could work efficiently to treat a potential epidemic and assist in restoring the community after a crisis.

Following the creation of a survey, whether conducted by the relief team, by a military body, or local organization, treatment and prevention could begin. The first step in prevention of typhus was to control the spread by establishing a barrier between infected and uninfected individuals, which is followed by isolation and disinfestation of individuals, then the elimination of lice. Lectures and suggested readings indicate that trainees entering areas of epidemic needed to maintain a high standard of personal hygiene and health, wear protective clothing and keep short

244 “Course I: Medical 23 Medical Relief Surveying” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; Hertha Kraus, International Relief in Action: 1914-1943 (Scottdale, PA: The Herald Press, 1944), 89. 245 “Course I: Medical 23 Medical Relief Surveying.”

hair, and that younger volunteers be posted to positions aiding in disinfestation due to their increased resistance.246 The control of typhus consisted of regular bathing and delousing.

Until the creation of DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) in 1939 and success in disinfestation among Allied troops in Italy in 1943, the method of disinfestation was through

“Serbian Barrels.” The “Serbian Barrel” is an underground pit or excavation, which when heated to the proper temperature, can disinfest clothing and material items. Training in this method of disinfestation was provided at the RAMC training center at Redditch and the Midland Assembly

Depot. A diarist at the Sixteenth Camp wrote of a day-trip to Redditch where trainees were introduced to RAMC methods of field hygiene:

This day was an unusual one in the life of the Camp and gave us a pleasant break from the usual daily lectures. […] Corporal Dyce, who has lectured here on a previous occasion, took charge of our party and gave us a lecture on filed hygiene with small models of improvised sanitary arrangements. When he had concluded, we went outside, following on the other party. Here we saw some forty working models made largely from petrol tins and mother earth, all of which testified strongly to the truth of the saying ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’ With the cold damp atmosphere and the protracted nature of the excursion, I think a large number of fellows would have been only too pleased to have sampled some of these patents of the Army School of Hygiene.247

The working relationship between the FAU and RAMC began during the Great War and would continue into the second. Thus training in methods and tools employed by the RAMC ensured the effectiveness of the FAU in addressing field hygiene and sanitation when dealing with infectious diseases. Reports from Europe, however, revealed that the method widely used of spraying of DDT powder made the “Serbian Barrel” an outdated process.248 Furthermore, the use of “Serbian Barrels”

246 Melville D. Mackenzie, Medical Relief in Europe: Questions for Immediate Study (Welwyn, Hertfordshire: The Broadwater Press, 1942), 37. 247 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).” 248 Edmead, Frank.

was reasonable in conditions that permitted the ease of drying clothing after the heating process; in Europe, the colder conditions also made this method less than ideal.249

Although vaccines were available and often used in immunization, the vaccine was not regarded as one-hundred per cent effective, thus the primary method of protection and fight against the spread of typhus was the chemical pesticide, DDT.250 After disinfestation, either through extreme heat (Serbian Barrels) or spraying DDT powder, a patient with typhus required careful nursing because the disease often weakened the heart of the patient. Though numbers vary, the death rate for untreated typhus can range from ten to forty per cent.251 A lecture titled “Typhus” notes that after twelve to fourteen days, once the patient shows signs of recovery, convalescence is rapid.252

In contrast to typhus, tuberculosis required the continued isolation of individuals infected and careful attention to nutrition. Treatment of pulmonary and bovine TB differed in that with pulmonary TB, rest could be achieved through surgical collapse of the lung and for bovine TB, infected bones rested in plaster. 253 Since the nineteenth century, individuals infected with tuberculosis sought care and treatment in sanitariums. Doctors interested in bacteriology studied the disease in an effort to determine its etiology and, hopefully, develop a vaccine. According to

“Nutritional Surveys and Tuberculosis,” control and treatment of TB was linked to its prevention and entailed isolation, improved nutrition, rest, and fresh air. The preferred method of treatment,

249 Mackenzie, Medical Relief in Europe: Questions for Immediate Study, 43. 250 Goodman, “Health in Europe,” 477. 251 “Department of Agriculture | Typhus Fever - Rickettsia Prowazekii,” accessed January 29, 2019, https://www.nj.gov/agriculture/divisions/ah/diseases/typhus.html; “WHO: Typhus,” WHO, accessed January 29, 2019, https://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs162/en/; Anna Rovid Spickler, “Rickettsia Prowazekii Infections” (The Center for Food Security & Public Health, February 2017), http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/Factsheets/pdfs/typhus_fever.pdf. 252 “Course I: Medical 13 Typhus.” 253 “Course I: Nutrition 4 Nutritional Surveys and Tuberculosis” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library.

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then, continued to be the sanitarium where infected populations could recover in isolation from healthy populations. The training programs advised volunteers to offer instruction for mothers on

“matters of hygiene and prevention” during recovery in a sanitarium.254

As one of the few diseases linked to malnutrition, treatment for TB also involved administration of easily digestible food, such as milk and dry biscuits. The individual should begin with 1000 calories, which is then increased slowly over a week to 2000. A lecture on nutritional surveys suggested, “In serious cases of malnutrition, the intestines may not be easily able to absorb large quantities of food. It is, therefore, better if it is possible, to give a large number of small meals rather than a few big ones. This usually increased the difficulties of administration, however.”255 The condition improves after twelve- to fourteen-days after initial crisis occurs and with careful nursing and convalescence the patient can have rapid recovery.256

The treatment and prevention of TB and typhus seem relatively straightforward in contrast to venereal diseases. During the Great War, the prevention of venereal disease among British troops reflected discourses at the home front including patriotism, loyalty, and morality; thus the sending of prophylaxis to troops overseas was viewed as justification for extramarital sexual intercourse and promiscuity among soldiers.257 Initially, then, prevention and treatment were lacking. Over the course of the Great War, twenty-seven per cent of all diseases among British troops requiring hospitalization were venereal diseases, and 416,891 men were treated for those diseases.258 Once the government and military understood the severity of the diseases and became

254 St. John Ambulance Association, Home Nursing, 195; “Course I: Nutrition 4 Nutritional Surveys and Tuberculosis.” 255 “Course I: Nutrition 4 Nutritional Surveys and Tuberculosis.” 256 “Course I: Medical 13 Typhus.” 257 “Course I: Medical 15 Diseases of the Central Nervous System and Venereal Disease”; Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), 145–47. 258 Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York: Anchor Books, 1990), 225.

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interested in acting to prevent VD among its soldiers, any measurement on the success of action is difficult to determine.

Though provided with a list drugs for the treatment of syphilis and gonorrhea, the lecture warns that success depends on early administration of drugs.259 This added to the difficulty of addressing venereal diseases as identification of the disease and the sheer mass of movement expected after the war could inhibit the distribution of drugs in a timely manner. The failure in prevention and treatment of “avoidable diseases” such as venereal diseases had long-term consequences.

In his article, Goodman cites an investigation of the Health Organization of the League of

Nations into a remote district in Bulgaria which showed that all inhabitants in the remote area

“were suffering from various forms of congenital syphilis and that it originated from a convalescent camp for Allied soldiers established there after the Crimean War.”260 The study, having been conducted in the inter-war years, certainly reveals the long-term impact of syphilis and consequence of lack of treatment but more importantly the neglected treatment among women.

Congenital syphilis occurs when a mother with syphilis passes the infection on to the baby during pregnancy and can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth, low birth weight, or even death shortly after birth.261 Contemporary research posited that not all mothers experience symptoms and not all babies born with syphilis will initially show symptoms, but perhaps will do so years later.262 Many women, then, not knowing they contracted syphilis in turn passed the disease on to

259 “Course I: Medical 15 Diseases of the Central Nervous System and Venereal Disease.” 260 Goodman, “Health in Europe,” 479–80. 261 “Congenital Syphilis - CDC Fact Sheet,” Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs), September 2017, https://www.cdc.gov/std/syphilis/stdfact-congenital-syphilis.htm. 262 “Congenital Syphilis - CDC Fact Sheet.”

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their children. The goal in 1944, according to Goodman, was to detect cases of disease and render individuals non-infectious, rather than focus on a cure.

The Allied governments, think tanks, field experts, and voluntary organizations like the

FRS and FAU, had serious concerns regarding the likelihood of postwar epidemics. Those concerns stemmed in part from the experience of epidemic disease during the Great War, but in most cases, the experience of interwar years and the reports emerging from Europe on the amount of displacement, movement, and conditions heightened fears of postwar epidemics and the possibility of pandemics. The relief and rehabilitation of Europe in the aftermath of the war could not proceed, nor succeed, if the populations receiving aid did not have access to medical relief at the initial stages. For these reasons, the FAU and FRS emphasized the importance of identification, prevention, and treatment of diseases exacerbated by wartime conditions.

Introduction to Nutrition and Mass Cooking

Access to food presented an enormous problem to populations in Europe throughout the immediate post-war era as food had been a component of warfare in 1939. The Allied governments implemented a blockade of Germany in 1939 to handicap Nazi governmental administrative systems, transportation, communication, and the morale of German civilian populations through limiting access to foodstuffs. Moreover, as the war progressed, Germany exploited occupied territories for food and resources for the Third Reich, which left European populations at risk of famine and starvation. An April 1943 report titled, “Hunger in Europe,” published by the Famine

Relief Committee in London cited news from Poland stating that caloric intake per person in working-class families in the prewar years ranged between 2,300 and 2,600, and by 1943 fell to

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600-800 for Christians and 220-290 for Jewish populations.263 With such a drastic drop in caloric intake, Polish populations faced acute famine conditions, which could create an exponential growth not only in deficiency diseases like scurvy or rickets, but also infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and typhus.

The FAU and FRS integrated lessons and hands-on practice into their training courses to prepare volunteers with the skills needed to address problems associated with malnutrition and starvation in target areas. Training at Manor Farm and Mount Waltham coupled practice in catering for large populations with lectures on calories and vitamins, malnutrition, and deficiency diseases.

For those who showed aptitude in catering, the FAU established relationships with outside institutions in dietetics, and developed the “Hacking Escalator” as an opportunity for advanced learning and practice in cooking and food distribution in hospitals and shelters prior to entering the field.

Training at Manor Farm included “orderly duties” in which one of six sections worked one day each week cleaning the camp living quarters and cooking food for the other camp sections and training officers. A trained cook, who was an ex-FAU member, offered a three-hour introduction and instruction to the cooks of each section on the first six days of the camp.264 The section on orderly duty for the day then had the opportunity to put those lessons into practice for the duration of the camp. The FAU posited that orderly duties ensured not only that the men received some training in mass cooking and catering, but also could be self-sufficient once in the field.

A diarist at Manor Farm notes, “Cooking for sixty, however, is intrinsically no worse than cooking for six, provided you have the space and the labour, both of which are available in fairly

263 “Hunger in Europe: A Statement of the Case for Controlled Food Relief in German Occupied Countries” (London: Famine Relief Committee, November 1942), 6. 264 “Private Report to Members of the Council of the Ambulance Unit for Friends from the Acting Chairman.”

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reasonable supply at the Camp.”265 David Rudd, Seventeenth Camp, appointed section cook, recalled, “Given the instructions all laid down in writing […] I didn’t have to buy anything or worry about anything or do the vegetables […] I must have cooked half a dozen times. […] This was the summit of my culinary career.”266 Trainees often found opportunities to tease each other for their cooking abilities, or lack thereof. One volunteer wrote:

Supper was a somewhat peculiar affair, at which the section on orderly duty invented an entirely unique and original dish, never known to have been conceived or consumed by anyone anywhere. Most of the members of the Camp, being of a less original and reflective turn of mind, made do with bread for their second course. We deplore this lack of initiative and congratulate the orderly section on its inventive powers.267

The FRS training program at Mount Waltham also incorporated orderly duty into the daily routine, however the work emphasized household cleaning and maintenance. Though the volunteers assisted with basic meal preparation such as peeling potatoes and helped with washing pots and pans, practical work in mass cooking and catering was comparatively limited.268 Unlike the FAU, the FRS offered extensive lectures on the topic of cooking: making soups and sauces; preparation of fish and meats either by boiling, steaming, stewing, braising or roasting; how to prepare root vegetables and greens; and recipes for baking bread, preparing porridge, semolina, and milk pudding.269 The FRS expected volunteers to put the recipes to use at home in hostels and, once the opportunity arose, overseas among populations receiving aid.

Interestingly, Mount Waltham offered insight into diets and taste in rural and urban populations across Europe. For example, Nutrition and Relief Work notes that in Poland, a low standard of living resulted in a diet consisted largely of vegetables, potatoes, and rye bread. The

265 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).” 266 Rudd, David. 267 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).” 268 Maw, The Training and Experience of a Quaker Relief Worker, 1946-1948; Noble, “Overseas Training Course X” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, November 1945), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 269 “Course I: Nutrition 11 Elementary Cooking” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; St. John Ambulance Association, Home Nursing, 106–29.

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book continues, “For flavourings, caraway seed is widely used with meat, vegetables and bread; dill is used like parsley in England, and other common herbs are marjoram, thyme, bayleaves, chives.”270 Various types of food and their preparation had been covered and compared to typical

British foods and meals. “European Peasant Diets” points out that foodstuffs such as “The English

Sandwich,” tea, toast, steamed puddings, mint and mixed spices are “almost unknown in Western

Europe.”271 Though such tips could be beneficial to the success of a mass cooking and feeding scheme, the handbook advises there are rarely instances where a local person is unavailable to assist in food preparation.

Lectures at Mount Waltham also covered the diet of European Jewish populations. Placed in the context of “fundamental principles” of Judaism, the lecture titled, “Religious Beliefs &

Observances of the Jews,” outlined basic traditions of the special diet of European Jews called

Kashrut. Certain forbidden foods to Jews include pig, rabbit, shellfish, and shot game. The preparation of food as kosher, meant that cows and sheep “must be killed and prepared correctly,” and milk and meat must not be mixed in the same meal.272 There is no suggestion that these rules must be observed or that conditions will permit observing these rituals, but it signified that the training program offered this information and reveals the appreciation of Jewish religious practices regarding diet and food by the FRS. Furthermore, if a Jewish population requested distinct preparation of particular foods, a relief worker or team could proceed equipped with knowledge of a basic understanding of Kashrut and kosher food preparation. Inclusion of this information in

270 Council of British Societies for Relief Abroad, Nutrition and Relief Work: A Handbook for the Guidance of Relief Workers (London and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1945), 62. 271 “Course I: Nutrition 6 European Peasant Diets” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 272 “Course I: Refugees 14 Religious Beliefs & Observances of the Jews” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library.

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the lecture series suggests that the FRS acknowledged that the fate and health of European Jews had been targeted during the war.

Both the FRS and FAU acknowledged that the possibility of a shortage of supplies, equipment, and food, as well as the heightened chaos that could accompany post-war emergency feeding schemes, which represented a potential challenge for volunteers in the field. One method used by the FRS and FAU to address those concerns included restricting access to certain foods in their respective training camps. Hugh Jenkins later recalled, “We had to live off the land, as it were.

[…] We had to construct a fire and cook food and do everything as though we had no access to food supplies except some very raw materials like a few carrots and a few potatoes. That was great, the only point was then we had to eat it.”273 Volunteers had to adapt to rough living and dining experiences to prepare for relief work in the field.

Volunteers in the FAU considered the “better cooks” and those interested in continuing training in cooking could do so under the supervision of experienced cooks in hostel kitchens, and often benefitted from “excursions into the kitchens of the London Hospital or Alton E.M.S.

Hospital.” 274 The “Hacking Escalator,” developed by Michael Hacking of the FAU Joint

Quartermastering Department, offered volunteers in the FAU, and later the FRS, the opportunity to pursue additional training in cooking and nutrition. The Escalator was a six-month course that consisted of training in mass cooking and distribution, in emergency cooking equipment, and quartermastering and storekeeping. The “corps of cooks” on the Escalator worked at four distinct locations, or “steps.” The first step began at Middlesex Hospital, which was followed by the second step in “Residential or Evacuation Hostels.” The training volunteers of the FAU and FRS received in hostels, overseen by Hacking, lasted between two and three months and focused on catering for

273 Jenkins, Hugh Montfort. 274 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 343.

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FAU and FRS members.275 The third step included cooking at hospital kitchens. This step lasted three months and included cooking in large-scale kitchens that catered to a daily population of 700 to 1,000.276 The Escalator concluded at Aldershot where volunteers engaged in field cooking with the British Army.277 When the FRS joined the Escalator, the last step had been adapted according to the FRS mandate and personal convictions regarding work with military bodies. Since some trainees whose convictions did not align with training alongside the army, the organizations made amendments to post individuals at hostels for additional training.278 Those who did not feel that training at Aldershot conflicted with their convictions had the opportunity to be seconded to the

FAU to receive such training.

Vitamins and Calories

The study of “calories”—units of measurement in food values corresponding to the energy created through combustion of food substances in the body—has roots in Ancient Greece, however the application of the term to nutrition and “food fuel value” began in the last decades of the nineteenth-century.279 Research conducted in nutritional sciences during the 1880s stemmed from an interest in determining an economical and efficient diet across age, occupation, and social class, in particular among the poorer and working classes.280 To determine the amount of calories and

275 Davies, 64; Friends House, “Information Bulletin” (London: Friends’ War Relief Service, June 4, 1943), FRS/1992/12, Friends House Library. 276 Friends House, “Information Bulletin.” 277 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 343; A.B.H., “Cooking Training, Conversation with Michael Hacking and Richard Wainwright,” June 17, 1943, FRS/1992/18, Friends House Library. 278 A.B.H., “Cooking Training, Conversation with Michael Hacking and Richard Wainwright.” 279 Mildred R. Ziegler, “The History of the Calorie in Nutrition,” The Scientific Monthly 15, no. 6 (December 1922): 520–26; Marion Nestle and Malden Nescheim, “The History: From Ancient Greece to Modern Calorie Science,” in Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2012), 21–29. 280 Nestle and Nescheim, “The History: From Ancient Greece to Modern Calorie Science,” 28; Kenneth J. Carpenter, “A Short History of Nutritional Science: Part 2 (1885-1912),” American Society for Nutritional Sciences, no. 133 (2003): 975; Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924, 222.

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nutrients in foods, contemporaries used a calorimeter that measured the amount of heat produced by proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Wilbur O. Atwater, the “father of modern nutritional science,” found in 1899 that most food energy used in the human body is for the “interior work,” that is breathing, blood circulation, and digestion, but also that most food energy is transformed into heat prior to leaving the body.281 In his study on the history of the calorie, Nick Cullather argues the calorie was never a neutral or objective measure of food, but instead the purpose of the calorie had been to reduce food and eating habits of populations as politically legible and as “one of the lesser tools facilitating a widening of the state’s supervision of the welfare and conduct of whole populations that has been referred to in different contexts as state building, modernism, or regulating the social.”282 Paul Weindling has argued that from the standpoint of the interwar years the First World War “could be viewed as a gigantic nutritional experiment, with those countries better able to mobilise sufficient food resources emerging with higher levels of health.”283 In the context of the interwar and wartime planning, the calorie became a scientific measurement of the commitments by the Allies to “welfare” and human rights as well as in determining aid among different refugee and DP populations. 284 The lessons in nutrition offered at Mount Waltham reflected these larger attitudes and approaches to feeding postwar populations as it detailed the significance of various vitamins and minerals, and the impact of malnutrition and famine on a population by offering mathematical equations and tips for measuring food, calories, and assessment of vitamins.

281 Nestle and Nescheim, “The History: From Ancient Greece to Modern Calorie Science,” 27. 282 Nick Cullather, “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie,” The American Historical Review 112, no. 2 (2007): 338. 283 Paul Weindling, “From Sentiment to Science: Children’s Relief Organisations and the Problem of Malnutrition in Inter-War Europe,” Disasters 18, no. 3 (1994): 204. 284 Cullather, “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie,” 339; Atina Grossmann, “Grams, Calories, and Food: Languages of Victimization, Entitlement, and Human Rights in Occupied Germany 1945-1949,” Central European History, no. 44 (2011): 121–22.

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By 1943, caloric values largely remained the same since the late nineteenth century; one gram of carbohydrates equaled 4.1 calories and one gram of fats equaled 9.3 calories. The lessons at Mount Waltham suggested ratios of protein, fat, and carbohydrates in a diet for an adult – 1/6 protein (1/2 protein from animal), 1/6 fat, 2/3 carbohydrate – and for an infant – 1/6 protein (all animal protein), 1/3 fat, ½ carbohydrate. The lesson also noted that basal metabolism or calories needed for a “sleeping man” is 1,700 whereas an active worker is 3,500 to 4,000 calories. Based on the given adult to child (a child being between the ages of one and two) ratio of 1:.35, the total caloric intake for a sedentary worker is 3,000 and 1,050 calories for a child. The caloric intake for pregnant women was the same as an adult male, except in the case of lactating women who should receive twenty percent more calories. Additionally, women who are pregnant or lactating needed extra protein in their diet. As both the FAU and FRS expected teams to work in famine areas, the caloric intake for an adult ranged between 2,500 and 3,000, and children between the ages of fourteen and eighteen should receive twenty-five percent more.285

Like the study of calories, research on “vitamins” had been recent and only expanded during the early twentieth-century. Bruno Cabanes argues the discovery of vitamins represents “a turning point in the history of nutritional science.” 286 Coined in 1911 by Polish biochemist,

Casimir Funk, vital amine or vitamin, is an organic compound not naturally produced in humans yet are essential to growth and development of the body.287 According to Kenneth Carpenter, of the articles published between 1928 and 1930 in The Journal of Nutrition, forty percent discussed

285 “Course I: Nutrition 1 The Bases of Nutrition” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 286 Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924, 223. 287 Kenneth J. Carpenter, “A Short History of Nutritional Science: Part 3 (1912-1944),” American Society for Nutritional Sciences, no. 133 (2003): 3023–32; Steve Ainsworth, “A Century of Vitamins,” Nurse Prescribing 9, no. 8 (2011): 374; “Course I: Nutrition 2 Vitamins and Deficiency Diseases” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library.

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the topic of “vitamins.”288 Much of that work stemmed from a growing interest among scientists, doctors, and researchers to understand growth rates and diet, as well as diseases such as scurvy, rickets, and beriberi.289 A diet could not rely on the measurement of caloric intake alone, but also needed to include vitamins as essential to creating a healthy balanced diet.

When preparing food for populations, particularly in famine areas, the relief team needed to ensure the food they cooked and distributed did not lose essential vitamins and minerals such as vitamin A, vitamin B (B1, B2, and riboflavin), iron, vitamin C, calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin

E. Vitamins are not named for their chemical structure, but instead by how they function within the human body. Manor Farm and Mount Waltham gave trainees lectures in vitamins, particularly the role of vitamins in the human body, their role in deficiency diseases and how to ensure vitamins could be integrated into diets.290 For example, “Vitamins and Deficiency Diseases” notes the “fat- soluble substance,” vitamin D, is essential in bone growth, therefore most significant during the ages of rapid growth.291 A deficiency of vitamin D in a diet, especially for children and pregnant mothers, can result in rickets. According to “Vitamins and Deficiency Diseases” two percent of children in country districts and ten to fifteen percent of children in the towns and cities of England suffer from rickets with symptoms ranging from anemia, swelling at growing ends of bones, poor posture, protrusion of abdomen, knock knees, and enlarged skull.292 The treatment of rickets includes “good all-round diet,” with an emphasis on sunlight and full-cream milk, if possible. The lecture also notes fish-oil, liver, and egg yolk all contain vitamin D and individuals suffering from

288 Carpenter, “A Short History of Nutritional Science: Part 3 (1912-1944),” 3023. 289 Carpenter, 3023. 290 “Course I: Nutrition 2 Vitamins and Deficiency Diseases”; “Course I: Nutrition 3 Vitamins and Deficiency Diseases (Cont’d)” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; “Camp Diaries (Northfield).” 291 “Course I: Nutrition 2 Vitamins and Deficiency Diseases.” 292 “Course I: Nutrition 3 Vitamins and Deficiency Diseases (Cont’d).”

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rickets should have a “massive dose – 20 to 50 thousand international units per day – of vitamin

D.”293 Trainees needed to be aware that a diet rich in calcium and vitamin D might be difficult in areas of famine or high rationing systems, thus the risk and prevention of rickets could be a challenge.

Over the course of the training programs at Manor Farm and Mount Waltham, trainees on orderly duty put these lessons into practice as they measured and determined the caloric and vitamin values of the food they prepared. A tongue-in-cheek diary entry from the Manor Farm

Fifteenth Camp reads:

Donovan held the whole camp spell-bound by his lecture on vitamins this morning. Alas! All theory, I fear, for having analysed tonight’s pudding I can state with confidence that it had a calorific value of 0 x. In consequence buns and lemonade, smuggled in from Northfield, have been employed by some members to supply calorific, vitamin, and mineral[s].294

Davies argues that knowledge of vitamins and calories quickly became regarded as “an essential qualification of the accomplished cook, and a few choice spirits were sent on for further training in dietetics at Hammersmith Hospital.”295 Ultimately, the emphasis on nutrition, vitamins, calories, deficiency diseases and malnutrition reflected the increased interest in research and studies in the field of nutrition after the First World War, as well as the field of humanitarianism that favored expertise in the practice of succor.296

The lessons in nutrition, calories, and vitamins coupled with practice in catering through orderly work in the training camps gave trainees a foundation for working in areas experiencing

293 “Course I: Nutrition 3 Vitamins and Deficiency Diseases (Cont’d).” 294 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).” 295 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the FAU in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 343. 296 Carpenter, “A Short History of Nutritional Science: Part 3 (1912-1944)”; Walter Gratzer, Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); “Food Conditions in Europe: A Statement on the Effect of War and Blockade on People in German-Controlled Countries”; Foot, Pye, and Walker, “Food Relief for Occupied Europe”; Goodman, “Health in Europe”; “Hunger in Europe: A Statement of the Case for Controlled Food Relief in German Occupied Countries”; Council of British Societies for Relief Abroad, Nutrition and Relief Work: A Handbook for the Guidance of Relief Workers.

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malnourishment or famine conditions. Though malnutrition, deficiency diseases, and infectious diseases such as malaria, typhus, and tuberculosis are likely to be present in areas experiencing famine, volunteers learned that an area experiencing malnutrition does not imply famine.

“Malnutrition” refers to the physical condition of an individual, “famine” is considered a condition that affects “a whole community of people living in a definable area.”297 The lack of a scientific nutritional standard in the assessment of malnutrition caused difficulty in determining the degree to which a population suffers from malnutrition. Mackenzie suggested the degree of nourishment could be determined through examination and assessment of blood, but such tests were only possible on a small scale.298 Lectures and suggested readings on survey-making, with regards to malnutrition and deficiency diseases, instructed trainees to collect information regarding the social and economic conditions of the population.

Essential to the building and implementation of a feeding relief scheme was the use of democratic relief work, drawing on the knowledge of and integrating local authorities into the scheme. Volunteers could begin a survey by obtaining official statements from local authorities and statistical data, which includes records of schoolchildren’s ages, heights and weights, statistics on deficiency and infectious diseases such as rickets and tuberculosis. When assessed collectively, normal growth rates for an area could be determined. Lectures, suggested readings, and contemporary reports collectively emphasized the importance of observation of school-age children. 299 The more information a team gained through official statements and from local authorities the better. Melville Mackenzie warned in Medical Relief in Europe that mothers either

297 Mackenzie, Medical Relief in Europe: Questions for Immediate Study; Norah Curtis and Cyril Gilbey, Malnutrition (Quaker Work in Austria 1919-24 and Spain 1936-39) (London: Oxford University Press, 1944). 298 Mackenzie, Medical Relief in Europe: Questions for Immediate Study, 26. 299 “Course I: Nutrition 3 Vitamins and Deficiency Diseases (Cont’d)”; “Hunger in Europe: A Statement of the Case for Controlled Food Relief in German Occupied Countries”; Mackenzie, Medical Relief in Europe: Questions for Immediate Study; Goodman, “Health in Europe”; “Relief for Europe: The First Phase of Reconstruction” (Washington, D.C.: National Planning Association, December 1942).

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exaggerate food shortage or are too ashamed to disclose how little food they and their children have had over the course of twenty-four hours.300

Due to the individualistic nature of deficiency diseases, volunteers needed to conduct individual examinations of the population either during or immediately after the creation of a survey. Various indicators of deficiency diseases include: pallor of earlobes, fingernails, lips, and inside eyelids; apathy or mental depression; presence or absence of luster in eyes, and a disinclination to look at bright lights; color and roughness of skin; examine both the teeth and gums; incidence of diarrhea; and the posture and muscular tone.301 Volunteers needed to be aware, however, that early detection of deficiency diseases based on symptoms can be difficult as some symptoms present in as early as eight weeks whereas others might only show after several months.

Once the team identified deficiency diseases among the population, they could begin efforts to remedy the illness. The FAU handbook, Home Nursing, notes the significance of milk in a diet for containing “all the constituents of a complete food” such as protein, fat, sugar, and water.302 During the Great War, the FAU established milk distribution centers in Belgium as a response to the high mortality rate of infants.303 Success of the milk distribution centers, which also distributed food to older children, relied on the transportation of milk from a central pasteurizing dairy by lorry to the center and over the course of the war the FAU continued to create and operate such centers. The lectures and suggested readings at Mount Waltham echoed the importance of milk to children. For example, the lecture titled “The Bases of Nutrition” noted that dried skimmed milk can increase the amount of animal protein for children (forty grams of dried

300 Mackenzie, Medical Relief in Europe: Questions for Immediate Study, 26. 301 “Course I: Nutrition 3 Vitamins and Deficiency Diseases (Cont’d).” 302 St. John Ambulance Association, Home Nursing, 112. 303 Winthrop Young, “A Story of the Work of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit,” 20; Brown, The Evolution of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (1914 and 1939), 8.

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skimmed milk has ten grans of animal protein, and children should receive at least forty and sixty grams of milk per day), and that milk serves as an excellent source of calcium. The lecture advised trainees that though milk contains vitamin C, riboflavin, and vitamin A, they could not assume dried skimmed milk had one or any of those vitamins.

Along with information from official sources and local authorities, training stressed the importance of investigations into the state and nature of available social and medical services.

Volunteers needed to determine the ways in which locals attended the problem and the importance of aid to existing services rather than developing new services. In addition, relief teams could reach out to local farmers and assist in rehabilitating local agriculture. This advice underscored the importance of democratic relief through restoration of medical and social services, as well as “self- help” among populations receiving aid.

Volunteers also needed to inquire about the established food rationing information and figures, the allocation of special rations for priority groups, local black-market activities, and the availability of fuel, whether wood, gas, or electric, and the time of day energy supplies are made available. One lecture suggested volunteers investigate local markets to determine the freshness and quality of available foods, particularly bread and milk. Trainees had been provided with a basic overview of how to assess food for quality and safety with reference to mold, yeast, and bacteria. For example, mold grows typically on food exposed to moisture and, though unsightly, can usually be cut or wiped away. Food usually found with mold included dried fruit, cheese, and bread. Bacteria, however, had been a serious concern; the anaerobic bacteria, a bacterium that lives in the absence of oxygen, called bacillus botulinus can cause food poisoning, is “almost immediately fatal” and can occur in finely chopped meat and in some vegetables, as well as in some home-canned foods: “It is detectable by a cheesy smell and possible gas production. These

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organisms are not killed by freezing but their growth is retarded.” 304 Based on the caloric requirements and rationing system, as well as availability of certain foodstuffs and fuels, relief teams could devise a method of food distribution and catering that utilized resources efficiently.

Most lessons suggest the establishment of a food kitchen or canteen that could feed a population all at once; this preserved fuel while at the same time ensured that the population received the prescribed rations.

Regarding organization of food distribution, especially milk to children, lectures and suggested readings indicated the creation of central locations for food distribution and the benefits of using schools. The lecture “The Administration of Refugee Camps” suggests organization of milk distribution should take place in a welfare center where parents and children could obtain medical assessment.305 Additionally, relief workers assisting in Spain and France between 1937 and 1940 found that children of school age “deteriorate more under camp conditions than almost any other class,” and thus advised the opening of schools as a priority and compulsory attendance.306 This would allow for easy distribution to take place, a wellness and health check of children, aid the reestablishment of child education if disrupted by conflict, and emphasize the importance of returning a sense of “normality” and routine among child populations.

Finally, investigation into transport facilities was essential to the development of a feeding scheme.307 During the Great War, the breakdown of transportation systems and railways resulted in widespread malnutrition, and in extreme cases, famine. The system of transportation available

304 “Course I: Nutrition 8 - 10 Food Inspection and Examination” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 305 “Course I: Refugees 6 The Administration of Refugee Camps (with Particular Reference to Spain and France 1937-40)” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 306 “Course I: Refugees 6 The Administration of Refugee Camps (with Particular Reference to Spain and France 1937-40).” 307 “Course I: Nutrition 4 Nutritional Surveys and Tuberculosis”; Mackenzie, Medical Relief in Europe: Questions for Immediate Study, 26–27.

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needed assessment and, if necessary, rebuilding to ensure that the goods coming from donations or through governmental purchases could be received. However, drawing on the experiences of famine relief in Russia between 1921 and 1922, the use of local labour in reinstating or rebuilding transportation systems did not work due to “weakness and apathy of the workers concerned.”308

To emphasize the effect of low caloric intake on the human body, as well as the sense of desperation and irrational conduct associated with famine and starvation, the rations at Mount

Waltham had been reduced for two to three days. Hugh Jenkins would later comment on the cutting of rations, believing it was to ensure “we get some idea of what it is like to be hungry.”309

Ultimately, it was not as simple as that.

Both Dr. Mackenzie and Tom Copeman, a journalist and member of the Quaker team assisting in Russia during the famine of 1921, found that malnutrition tended to be found in towns and industrial centers though “acute famine” generally did not exist, and in contrast rural areas tended to experience acute starvation and famine conditions. Between 1921 and 1922, British and

American Quakers provided aid to Russians suffering from acute famine conditions. Drawing on the Soviet famine of 1921 and 1922, the lecture, “Famine Relief Work,” noted that “Famine by definition implies a high death rate.”310 The famine, affecting more than thirty million people in the Volga Basin, resulted in the death of an estimated 5.2 million people.311

Additionally, a lecture on famine relief work in Russia in the 1920s notes the phenomena found in and among populations in famine areas, including “the daily dead cart, breakdown of the ordinary burial facilities, and even acts of cannibalism and the sale of human flesh in the public

308 “Course I: Refugees 6 The Administration of Refugee Camps (with Particular Reference to Spain and France 1937-40).” 309 Jenkins, Hugh Montfort. 310 “Course I: Nutrition 5 Famine Relief Work” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 311 Michal Reiman, About Russia, Its Revolutions, Its Development and Its Present (Frankfurt-Am-Main, Germany: Peter Lang Edition, 2016), 26; Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 242.

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market.”312 Dr. Mackenzie seconded these findings in his work Medical Relief in Europe. Though he covers the increased rate of infectious skin diseases, anemia, and death among populations in famine areas, he stresses the link between malnutrition and “psychological abnormalities.” Dr.

Mackenzie argues that cannibalism, either through necrophagy or the killing of individuals, found in at least one area of Europe between 1919 and 1921 was by persons “mentally unbalanced through starvation” or persons who felt neither repugnance or guilt at their actions. 313 Both instances are indicative acute starvation among the population, however until a medical assessment is conducted of the individuals, relief workers needed to exercise caution when determining criminality and punishment.

Trainees were instructed that populations or individuals engaging in necrophagy who maintain a guilt-free mentality toward their actions should not be necessarily considered criminal, but instead they had only succumbed to their condition. In contrast those who attempt to hide their activity are aware of the criminality of action and thus liable for punishment.314 Dr. Mackenzie warns that medical relief officers should keep in mind that “innocent and guilty alike are suffering from varying degrees of acute starvation.” The likelihood that trainees could appreciate the extreme psychological impact of acute starvation through limited rations seems minute, yet awareness and experience with low caloric intake could be better than none at all. When confronted with situations like necrophagy, trainees needed to exhibit understanding, address the situation in a respectful and informed manner, and avoid jumping to quick judgement. Therefore, the development of relief schemes for areas of malnutrition and famine shared similar aspects as well as crucial differences.

312 “Course I: Nutrition 5 Famine Relief Work”; Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924, 227. 313 Mackenzie, Medical Relief in Europe: Questions for Immediate Study, 31. 314 Mackenzie, 30.

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A decisive point found throughout the lectures, as well as in suggested readings, focused on the health and welfare of the relief workers.315 Dr. Mackenzie stressed the value of healthy relief workers to ensure successful relief. He writes:

To eat a full meal in a starving area is one of the most harrowing experiences possible, but if the work is to continue it is unavoidable. Otherwise the staff become weak and ill and not only fail to carry out their own duties but become a burden to others. It will generally be found necessary to insist upon the dismissal of any relief worker found sharing his rations with those starving, as otherwise the practice rapidly grows, with proportionate loss of efficiency in the relief unit itself.316

Although the conditions at both Manor Farm and Mount Waltham reflected corporate living in uncomfortable conditions, and at times with reduced rations, the primary concern for relief workers in the field included eating full rations and maintaining their overall health. Lectures, then, suggested a relief team appoint an individual to oversee the health and welfare of the others to safeguard the effectiveness of the relief program.

The lessons and practice integrated into training programs at Manor Farm and Mount

Waltham worked in conjunction to give trainees the necessary skills to cater to large populations while at the same time ensuring that food did not lose important nutritional benefits often lost with certain cooking methods. A benefit the trainees had, which might not be the case in Europe, was access to food, fuel, and material needed to cook for a receiving population. Trainees could build on lectures from other areas of relief work regarding the creation of a survey to determine the nutritional health of a population and develop a feeding scheme to address dietary deficiencies, utilize transportation and resources efficiently, and engage in democratic relief by integrating the population into the scheme while promoting “self-help.”

315 Mackenzie, 31; “Course I: Nutrition 1 The Early Stages in Famine Relief Administration” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; “Course I: Nutrition 5 Famine Relief Work.” 316 Mackenzie, Medical Relief in Europe: Questions for Immediate Study, 31.

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Though some attempts had been made to prepare trainees to confront a lack of access to food, the conditions could not fully reflect or account for the reality that accompanied mass wartime destruction. Furthermore, the training program contained conflicting messages. On the one hand, lectures provided trainees with some insight into regional or ethnic food tastes, as well as basic kosher food preparation for Jewish populations, which suggests the lecturers and training programs reflected an appreciation for the varied national and ethnic groups receiving aid. On the other hand, the lectures also introduced trainees to both caloric values and the methods of determining those values in the field that corresponded to age and ability or position in a workforce, which dehumanizes a population in need by reducing the population to a caloric value.

Conclusion

Training programs at Manor Farm and Mount Waltham offered trainees basic introductions to infectious diseases by outlining their identification, treatment, and prevention. The lessons in nutritional studies included the integration of practice in mass cooking and orderly work, and lectures on components of the diet including calories and vitamins. To support the lectures and lessons, both the FAU and FRS utilized past experience and case studies to emphasize the successes and failures of relief schemes, as well as contemporary reports and research by field experts and think tanks on the progress and state of infectious diseases and nutrition in Europe.

Finally, the FAU and FRS emphasized the basic technique of surveying an area in need to determine the extent of and most efficient scheme to help those suffering from malnutrition and

Such training, then, ensured FAU and FRS volunteers could enter the field to work alongside doctors, nurses, local authorities and voluntary services as they sought to identify symptoms and conditions that exacerbate diseases such as tuberculosis and typhus, provide home nursing in the

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recovery of diseases, develop large-scale feeding schemes, and assist in the restoration of necessary services as a means of “self-help.”

The lessons and lectures on infectious diseases and nutrition echoed predominant discourses and attitudes about humanitarian aid espoused by contemporary think tanks and Allied planners; the application of scientific and technical approaches to postwar aid would decrease the risks of epidemic and famine among suffering populations in the postwar period. The benefit of introducing volunteers to recent advancements and scientific data related to disease prevention and treatment or in famine relief could lend to the effectiveness of aid provided in the postwar period, especially if those volunteers work alongside military bodies or specialists who might rely on them to assist in developing treatments or programs. Furthermore, the amount of attention and detail found within the lessons on epidemic and famine relief are indicative of how the larger concerns expressed by interwar and wartime planners resonated within the FAU and FRS as both organizations understood these threats as a part of the first and second stages of relief. Yet, the over-emphasis of or inundation in technical knowledge and scientific approaches within the lessons, in many ways, dehumanized the population receiving aid as well as minimized the importance of adaptability and improvisation of relief workers when confronted with a lack of material, foodstuff, or medicine in the field.

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CHAPTER SIX: AMBULANCE AND TRANSPORT SERVICES

When the FAU formed as an emergency ambulance service in 1914, the British military authorities expressed hesitancy in allowing a Quaker voluntary organization work near the frontlines. Furthermore, as John Ormerod Greenwood has pointed out, motor transport had been a relatively new method in ambulance services.317 Yet, after discussions with the chairman of the

War Committee of the Red Cross and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, the FAU, initially called the “First Anglo-Belgian Field Ambulance,” sent forty-three members to the continent. The FAU arrived in Dunkirk in 1914 to provide emergency relief services and quickly began work among

Belgian, French, German, and British wounded and unattended soldiers. Over the course of three weeks, the FAU treated 3,000 men and evacuated 6,000.318 The volunteer men set up and ran auxiliary medical hospitals and convoys with French forces. Although military authorities did not fully realized the value of motor transport in the first months of the war, by December of 1914 the

FAU had twenty-four cars behind French lines that signaled the success and growth of early medical transport during war time.319 Over the course of the Great War, the FAU aided both military and civilians throughout France and Belgium, either in evacuation schemes or attending wounded individuals and in need hospitalization; the FAU quickly established a reputation for efficiency and aptitude in ambulance trains and emergency transport.320

The reputation and action of the FAU during the Great War inspired romantic and dramatic notions of war relief among a new generation of volunteer relief workers. Lilian Cadoux, who

317 Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 189. 318 Greenwood, 186. 319 Greenwood, 188. 320 Brown, The Evolution of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (1914 and 1939), 7.

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trained with the FRS and later joined the FAU, later recalled: “I was really going to do my bit […]

I was going to drive an ambulance through the Blitz in London.”321 Though Cadoux did not receive driving and mechanics training during her time with the FRS or even after she transferred to the

FAU, her sentiments nonetheless reflect an amalgamation of quixotism and service – a motivation found among others who joined the FAU.322 The purpose of this chapter is to examine the development of driving and mechanic training programs by the FAU and the ways in which the

FRS became integrated into the programs in 1943, whilst emphasizing the ways in which the two organizations responded to challenges presented by wartime relief preparation, wartime conditions, and postwar ambulance and transport needs in the British Occupation Zone from 1944 to 1948.

Emergency Service and Stretcher Drill Training

The training programs at Manor Farm and Mount Waltham complimented lessons in first aid with practical lessons and drills. The practice sessions were one-on-one, in small groups, or as a collective in which everyone responds to a large-scale emergency situation. Based on experiences of the FAU during the Great War, the organization knew that volunteers in the field would likely be confronted with an emergency situation that called for quick and decisive action.

Therefore the organizations established the practices and “call-outs” to afford trainees the opportunity to put lectures and demonstrations to use and at the same time have trained medical professionals close at hand to provide guidance and correct mistakes.

In the early nineteenth century disease killed more men than wartime combat, whereas during the Great War “deaths in battle were almost exclusively violent ones” even if disease

321 Cadoux, Lilian Violet. 322 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 3; Coates, “Private Papers of RN Coates”; Arnold, Ralph Hodby; Edmead, Frank.

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remained high.323 Scholars argue this is owed to the new weaponry – “Big Bertha,” machine guns, poison gas, and flamethrowers – as well as new modes of warfare – trenches, tanks, submarines.324

Many of the volunteers to the FAU heard stories of or saw firsthand the physical and psychological impact modern weaponry had on the men who fought in the Great War. When FAU training began in 1939, however, the FAU made a point of introducing volunteers to and stressing the importance of first-hand knowledge of advanced military technology on providing appropriate emergency ambulance services.325 Lectures and demonstrations at Manor Farm, the Air Raid Precaution

Schools at Middleton Park and Paganel Road, and at the RAMC training school introduced men to air raid precaution and fire drill, Civil Defense services, decontamination, and the loading and unloading of ambulances. More significantly, the lessons by the RAMC introduced FAU volunteers to military technologies such as ante- high-explosive and incendiary bombs.326

Collectively, these lectures, demonstrations, and the practice sessions that followed challenged the trainees to assess an emergency situation and respond according to the skills and knowledge gained in first aid and field hygiene in a cooperative and efficient manner. A diary entry from the Fourth Camp details a lesson on tear gas, emphasizing the elusiveness of the substance: “The smarting of the tear gas on our faces and necks was the only indication that we were in contact with this unpleasant vapor until Dr. Smith suggested that we might insert two

323 Stéfanie Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14-18: Understanding the Great War, trans. Catherine Temerson (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 23. 324 Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age; Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1918 (London: Arnold, 1997); Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker, 14-18: Understanding the Great War. 325 Arnold, Ralph Hodby; Gardiner, Gerald Austin, interview by Lyn Smith, September 12, 1988, Imperial War Museum, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80010234; Moore, Deryck Rolfe; Spray, William Hillah; Turner, Eric Aubrey John. 326 “Executive Committee Report to the Staff Meeting,” March 11, 1942, MSS 876/FAU/1948/2/2, Friends House Library; “Report on Work of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit’s 1st and 2nd Camps until November 24, 1939,” November 1939, MSS 876/FAU/1948/2/2, Friends House Library; “Camp Diaries (Northfield).”

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fingers in the side of our masks. This sniff left us in no doubt as to the ill effects of tear gas.”327

Of the new weaponry, a diarist of the Sixteenth Camp remarked, “The fiendish efficiency of many these weapons used in modern war was rather depressing.”328

Manor Farm also incorporated simulated emergency situations, or “call-outs,” that afforded trainees with the time and space to put their learned skills in first aid and knowledge of military weaponry into practice. A diary entry from the Tenth Camp in January 1941 detailed the environment of a theoretical emergency crisis, which later reflected the very real situation Great

Britain faced during the Blitz:

We were, [in theory] bombarded on all sides with H.E. and the Luftwaffe sprayed us with gas. […] Enemy aircraft dropped incendiaries on our highly inflammable clearing station and we had to make a hasty retreat to a neighbouring hay-stack. After inspection of the casualties by Surgeon Major Robinson M.C., DSO., of the R.A.M.C. (late Indian Medical Service) we lifted our ‘beds’ and walked home.329

The lectures and demonstrations on military weaponry and modes of warfare provided a foundational understanding for combat and the services needed for wartime relief, whereas the simulation of a crisis required application of such knowledge in conjunction with knowledge of first aid, field hygiene and sanitation, and cooperative transport of the injured. As a physical activity, the daily marches and drill ensured the trainees could handle the varied wartime situations with speed and efficiency.

The simulations of crisis and distress varied to each call-out and to each individual camp, however, the goal was the same – to prepare the men for high-intensity emergency relief and ambulance work. Clifford Barnard described the call-outs in a letter to his parents in October 1943:

We had to search and find imaginary wounded cases and take them back to an ADS [Advanced Dressing Station] for treatment. The stretchers, with a live body on board had to be negotiated over a 6ft wall, through a knee deep river, and when one finally arrived at

327 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).” 328 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).” 329 “Camp Diaries (Northfield).”

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the ADS we were sent out to find further casualties. […] A few days later we had a ‘commando’ course in the field by the camp, modelled on an Royal Army Medical Corps course. It involved treating the ‘patient’, bandaging and putting on splints etc., getting him on a stretcher and again carrying it over various obstacles – fences, ditches, steep banks, hedges, a stream and even some waterfall[.]330

Although the simulations of crisis and distress varied from camp to camp, they were an amalgamation of all the in-camp lessons and knowledge gained from institutional visits, like those to the RAMC, and had the same overall goal—to prepare the men for high-intensity emergency relief and ambulance work. Several members would later mention this aspect of training was difficult, and even criticized the practices, yet most understood the merit of such training and even enjoyed the sense of camaraderie and discipline gained. Ultimately, the FAU took a holistic approach to training volunteers at Manor Farm in first aid, simulated crisis faced during wartime, and an evaluation that provided them with constructive feedback.

Driving and Mechanics

When the FAU reformed in 1939, the organization did not have formal lessons in driving and mechanics, but instead relied on volunteers with previous driving experience. This policy and approach resulted in several problems. First, when the opportunity to send men overseas for relief work began in late 1939, those with knowledge of mechanics and driving experience were among the first to be sent overseas, thus leaving the Unit with a shortage of trained men at home and available for any other overseas relief work opportunities. Second, most men coming to the Unit with prior experience only gained that experience by driving the “family car” and not with driving larger three- or four-ton trucks used by the organization and armies. The FAU, therefore faced the challenge of transitioning ordinary drivers into highly skilled drivers and mechanics. The Unit

330 Barnard, Binding the Wounds of War: A Young Relief Worker’s Letters Home 1943-47, 25–26.

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wanted to have both trained drivers and mechanics who could, when faced with a situation, fix and service their own vehicle. Telga Davies characterizes this initial period in driving and mechanics training as both unorganized and haphazard.331 The challenge to training men in driving and mechanics was exacerbated and fully realized when hostilities in Europe intensified in December

1939 with the Russo-Finnish “Winter War” and the FAU sent a driving team to Finland.

In 1939 the Soviet Union sought to annexation of the Karelian Isthmus on the Gulf of

Finland, which would serve as a defense against Germany and provide access to ports.332 In return for the isthmus, Finland would receive Soviet territory, twice the size of the Karelian Isthmus,

Repala and Poräjavi. Finland declined the offer from the Soviet Union, began building up arms, and established a fortification on the Mannerheim Line, all while maintaining the 1939 declaration of neutrality. The Soviet Union invented a reason to invade and secure the desired territory; on

November 26, 1939 the Soviet Union announced artillery shells had been fired from Finland into

Soviet territory, though the government in Finland maintained none had been placed in that area and thus could not have come from Finland military.333 Nevertheless, the Soviet used the incident to justify the invasion and on November 30, 1939 the Red Army attacked Finland.

The British Government, fearful of Soviet expansion, supported Finland yet did not have the resources to fully intervene. After interviews and negotiations between the FAU, the BRCS, the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Labour, and the Ministry of Economic Warfare, the FAU sent a team—under the aegis of the British Red Cross—to Finland in January 1940. The FAU Finnish team, living and working alongside the Finnish army, comprised fifty-eight men, twenty

331 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 340. 332 “A Short History of the ‘Winter War,’” Imperial War Museums, accessed April 8, 2019, http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/a-short-history-of-the-winter-war; J.A. Bayer, “British Policy Towards the Russo- Finnish Winter War 1939-40,” Canadian Journal of History 16, no. 1 (April 1981): 27. 333 “A Short History of the ‘Winter War’”; Bayer, “British Policy Towards the Russo-Finnish Winter War 1939-40,” 33.

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ambulances, three supply lorries, and three staff cars.334 The Unit was faced with harsh weather conditions, the difficulty of maneuvering Ford ambulances on icy snow-covered roads, and the challenge of having little to no knowledge of Finnish language.335 The team gave aid to wounded

Finnish soldiers and helped with evacuation of 2,500 Finnish civilians and refugees when the war ended after three months of fighting.336 The Winter War gave the FAU their first ominous experiences of the war on the continent, and the organization realized that the conditions of Europe and the needs of suffering populations would only be exacerbated as the war went on.

By the summer and autumn of 1940, the FAU teams that operated in Finland travelled to

Egypt to assist the Australian Red Cross units and the British Army. In Egypt, the FAU drove ten

Red Cross ambulances and transported British, Australian, and Italian casualties between trains, ships, and hospitals near Alexandria. There had been little work to do during their first six months in Alexandria; to avoid becoming “ragged,” the men held physical training, first aid practices, driving instruction with new vehicles, and stretcher drills.337 The FAU then moved into Greece in

March 1941 to work as an independent organization with equipment and ambulances from the

British Red Cross Middle East Commission. One month after arriving in Greece, the German

Wehrmacht invaded, prompting the FAU to begin evacuations alongside the Greek Red Cross before joining the Allied retreat south.338 As reports of the work of Unit men in Finland, Egypt, and Greece made their way back to London, the FAU realized that in order to meet the demands abroad an expansion of training in driving and mechanics needed to be undertaken.339

334 “Friends’ Ambulance Unit: Fourth Annual Report, 1939-1943,” 6. 335 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 23. 336 “Friends’ Ambulance Unit: Fourth Annual Report, 1939-1943,” 6. 337 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 80. 338 “Friends’ Ambulance Unit: Fourth Annual Report, 1939-1943,” 7; Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 284. 339 “Executive Committee Report to the Staff Meeting,” June 7, 1941, MSS 876/FAU/1948/2/2, Friends House Library.

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Although the needs for trained drivers overseas prompted the FAU to seek out additional training programs, the Blitz began in 1940 demonstrated that domestic relief introduced an even more immediate need. Initially, the Transport Section of the FAU included a handful of men who oversaw the maintenance of vehicles in a small garage, yet over the course of 1941 the number of vehicles and mechanics increased in response to evacuations, routine shelter rounds, journeys between London and provinces, and transport of goods and supplies. The FAU moved into a larger commercial garage and the Section grew to include nearly fifty men.340 Though the domestic and foreign wartime conditions necessitated growth, the number of skilled drivers and mechanics coming into the Unit could not meet the demand.

Volunteers came to the Unit with varying degrees of experience in driving. The socio- economic background of volunteers determined the amount, or lack of, experience with motorcars.

Most men did not own a family motorcar or work in professions that necessitated a vehicle. Petrol rationing in 1939 also limited the use of private cars and, thus, experience among men in driving.

David Rudd knew how to drive prior to joining the FAU, but only knew how to drive the “family car.” He later recalled that when attending a mechanics course near Bristol in 1943, he was one of only a few men that knew how to drive at all.341 Deryck Moore, in contrast, had extensive training in mechanics and driving; during his youth he spent time with his father and other mechanics breaking down cars, taking apart engines, and driving. Moore was highly valued when he began training and he later suggested the Unit knew the value of his knowledge. He reflected, “So, I went into the FAU already trained in mechanic and driver, all they had to do was clean me up and give me hospital training.”342

340 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 55. 341 Rudd, David. 342 Moore, Deryck Rolfe.

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In 1941, select FAU members began training in an eight to sixteen-week mechanics course at the LCC Hackney Technical Institute in London followed by work in either their own Unit garage or commercial garages to put their skills to the test and gain additional experience. The course covered both practical and theoretical skills in mechanics that extended far beyond general auto care, and the Unit sent several groups of men to begin training. William Hillah Spray, FAU, participated in a training course at Hackney and recalled the complex nature of this instruction:

“There was a marvelous tutor who was clear that we were mostly going to be driving large charcoal burning lorries on the Burma road and it was essential we knew how a carburetor worked so that when one broke down one could actually mend it. I never did grasp all this.”343 David Rudd and

Brian Locke learned how to rebuild and service “Bedford trucks,” which had been the primary vehicle used by the British Army.

In addition to the course at Hackney, the Eleventh and Twelfth Camps at Manor Farm in the spring of 1941 were designed exclusively for training in mechanics and driving. A report from

June notes that thirty members, with a Commandant, Quartermaster and Training Officer, were in attendance with instruction covered by a lecturer and demonstrator in engineering from

Birmingham University.344 Material covered included motor mechanics and, after procurement of old engines, stripping and reassembling.345 Though training continued to pick up speed through

1941, the FAU quickly recognized the members training at Hackney and the two camps at Manor

Farm in rudimentary driving and mechanics were not enough. As Davies points out, “There was little method in it, and it became increasingly obvious that part-time driving instruction in London and mechanics’ courses for which the trainees lived among the distractions of an ordinary Unit

343 Spray, William Hillah. 344 “Executive Committee Report to the Staff Meeting,” June 7, 1941. 345 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 341.

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hostel in London were not satisfactory.”346 The Unit, therefore, aimed to establish an “institution” where trainees could, after training in hospitals, receive full-time instruction. The opportunity to establish such a site, however, came after the unfortunate death of FAU members.

In 1941, Tom Tanner and Peter Hume were en route to India and China to provide aid when their ship was torpedoed and sunk. Tanner was Commandant of the FAU and his father, Herbert, also served in the FAU during the Great War. To honor the work of his deceased son, Herbert

Tanner offered a part of his family home in Failand to serve as an additional training ground for the FAU in autumn of 1942. The house at Failand, located seven miles from Bristol, had access to county roads for volunteers to learn driving and a barn that afforded the space for learning mechanics. The course mirrored some aspects of Manor Farm in that it included orderly and cooking instruction, route marches and stretcher drills, and, by 1944, language studies.

Significantly, between September 1942 and March 1946, Failand trained 231 volunteers in a twelve-week course under the instruction of Unit members and engineers on mechanical instruction. 347 The course included lessons on the carburetor, electrical systems, motor-body repairs, and in driving, which was followed with a test that placed trainees on a scale from

“competent” to “advanced.” Michael Cadbury later suggested that driving in a three-ton truck with men who came to Failand with no experience was “hair raising” and it took “a good deal of courage” for those instructors riding along.348 In 1944, the FAU added a second training site, Moor Hall

Farm, in Clent. Though the training program only had three courses, Davies argues it had been vital in laying the foundations in driving and mechanical knowledge. 349 Brian Locke, FAU,

346 Davies, 341. 347 Davies, 341; Friends Ambulance Service, “Third Report of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, October 1941- September 1942,” 1942 1941, 5, S Peace ArCDG-B, Swarthmore Peace Collection. 348 Cadbury, Michael H. 349 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 342.

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attended the course at Clent. He recalled that the course had, “very good car and lorry repair and service instruction concentrated on reducing wear, particularly bearings, clutch and brake linings, and handbrake ratchets; and electrics and carburetors too, for petrol economy.”350 Field work demonstrated the importance of revising automotive parts and maintaining engines.

The shortage of petrol in Britain remained a significant concern within the FAU, particularly with regards to driving training. A rationing scheme developed prior to the war resulted in a drastic decrease in the driving of private cars. On August 2,1939, The Times reported the House of Commons began planning for rationing schemes for both passenger and goods transport and private motorcars. Although fuel reserves for service and civil purposes had been increased once the British assumed command of the seas for transport of petrol, the use of petrol for private use experienced regulation through issuing of ration books.351 By September 23, The

Times noted, “There is no more place for joy-riding.”352 Three years into the war the ration of fuel was dropped completely, which meant non-essential drivers came to rely solely on bus or train transport. Recent scholarship suggests the fuel restrictions, though justified through wartime propaganda as a sacrifice, amplified difficulties for women trying to feed children and workers requiring bus travel to and from work.353 As Robert Mackay argues, “what might have been tolerated as a minor inconvenience had it been for a short time became a wearisome part of existence when it dragged on through the six years of war.”354

350 Locke, “An Unimportant Member of the FAU,” 2. 351 From Our Special Correspondent, “Petrol Rationing in Wartime,” The Times, August 2, 1939, The Times Digital Archive. 352 From Our Special Correspondent, “Petrol Rations in Force,” The Times, September 23, 1939, The Times Digital Archive. 353 Robert Mackay, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2002); Mark J. Crowley and Sandra Trudgen Dawson, eds., Home Fronts: Britain and the Empire at War, 1939-45 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK; Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2017), 23; David Welch, Persuading the People: British Propaganda in World War II (London: The British Library, 2016), 57. 354 Mackay, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War, 109.

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The War Office supported the use of petrol for training FAU drivers and mechanics. Yet in 1941, when the training programs expanded, the FAU believed the best option for training drivers and simultaneously ensuring petrol would not be misused or wasted would be to integrate

FAU drivers into domestic relief efforts. Just as in other areas of relief training and domestic work, the Unit established working relationships with various programs and institutions that needed skilled volunteers. For example, both Rudd and Locke drove milk lorries in England while waiting for an opportunity to serve overseas. Their jobs, as milk lorry drivers, included early morning milk collection and distribution throughout the area. Rudd recalled that the vehicles were in appalling condition, and one lorry did not have brakes at all that resulted in the vehicle going into a ditch.

Luckily, however, Rudd was taught how to “wind it out of a ditch.”355 Locke collected milk from

Herefordshire farms for the Cadbury, then Milk Marketing Board, pasteurizing factory. He believed these provincial experiences in driving, “was training for driving under ‘second front’ conditions, as well as character-building.”356

In 1941, the Ministry of Food approached the FAU regarding assistance with an emergency food service to devastated areas of heavy air-raids: Coventry, Barking, Plymouth, and Liverpool.

The service, named the Queen’s Messenger Food Convoy after Queen Elizabeth donated the first of eighteen services, consisting of mobile water tanks, kitchens and canteens, a welfare van, and store vans.357 Working alongside the Women’s Voluntary Service, the FAU provided teams to work in two of the London-based convoys. The vehicles and supplies used in the convoy—seven

30 cwt Bedford lorries, a water truck, three motorbikes, and foodstuff—had been donated to the

355 Rudd, David. 356 Locke, “An Unimportant Member of the FAU,” 3. 357 From Our Food Correspondent, “Emergency Cooking In Hyde Park,” The Times, May 28, 1943, The Times Digital Archive; Carol Harris, Women at War 1939-1945: The Home Front (The History Press, 2000); “Friends Ambulance Unit: Second Report, November 1940-October 1941” (London, 1941), MISC 256/3 FAU 9/1-2, Imperial War Museum.

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service by American voluntary aid organizations including the American Red Cross.358 Nev Coates worked in the Convoy and recalled the job, “added variety and even a spot of glamour to our rather gloomy existence.” Coates describes the trucks and working in the service:

Lovely vehicles, painted with blue and cream in a camouflage pattern to be eye-catching, and christened ‘Queen’s Messengers’. The vehicles and engines had to be checked over and cleaned for an inspection by a ‘high personage’ and […] after a two-hour teaching session at Lloyds shelter from 8 to 10, I joined the drivers and we drove in convoy from Stamford Hill to Lambeth, some nine or ten miles through the centre of London. Great fun, especially as most of us had not driven anything larger than a car.359

The men working in the Convoy, overseen by an experienced driver and mechanic, had the opportunity to put their knowledge of mechanics and driving skills to use while at the same time provide a useful service to populations suffering from air raids. This underscored the FAU aim of a two-fold job – training volunteers and providing much needed domestic aid.

The Joint Transport Organization

When the FRS established training programs in 1943, they engaged in several discussions with the FAU on how the two organizations conceptualized their role in relief work in relation to the other. Those discussions, had of course, foundations in the larger conditions of chaos and overlap experienced among voluntary relief organizations during the Great War. As discussed, the

FAU established itself as an emergency ambulance relief organization that centered in transport services, whereas the FRS, created on the traditions established by the FWVRC, provided more stationary forms of relief during the Great War. The FRS recognized the shifts in modern warfare and within the field of relief work that required efficient transport services. Therefore, in order to meet relief goals and the FRS needed to train volunteers as drivers and mechanics. The two

358 “American Gifts To Britain,” The Times, December 7, 1940, The Times Digital Archive. 359 Coates, “From the London Blitz to the Champs Elysees: An Account of Service with the Friends Ambulance Unit, 1940-1945,” 47.

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organizations did not want to risk spending time and resources on developing and training relief teams that, when in Europe, would be superfluous. The FAU and FRS decided that departments within their organizations, such as the transportation department, should merge to become the Joint

Transport Organization. The Joint Transport Organization ensured both funds and personnel could be put to the greatest use in both domestic and overseas relief, diminishing waste and overlap.

Initially, the FAU supplied most of the personnel for transport services, yet by July 1943 the two organizations concluded that all FRS and FAU members interested in overseas work should have skills in driving and some “elementary knowledge” in mechanics.360 Preliminary discussions centered on the possibility of incorporating FRS members into the training programs at Hackney and Failand while recognizing the FAU remained the primary emergency ambulance relief organization. For training in driving only, the two organizations utilized the British School of Motoring as a resource. Members of the FRS interested in driving and mechanics could attend courses held at Hackney and the program was incorporated into the Joint Transport Organization.

Len Darling, of FAU, initiated a plan for both organizations that would allow members, having taken the sixteen-week course at Hackney, to become apprentice mechanics in the FAU or in commercial garages and begin work on qualifying in 2nd class and eventually 1st class mechanics.361 The Failand course, however, was exclusive to the FAU until October 1943.362

Just as in the FAU, volunteers came to the FRS with a mixed background and a range of experience with driving, mechanics, or both. At the start of the war in 1939, Hugh Jenkins applied for received CO status and was posted to agricultural farm work as part of a Surrey program in which he worked as a heavy haulage driver loading and unloading farm machinery loaned to

360 “Notes on Q.M. Meeting,” July 9, 1943, FRS/1992/18, Friends House Library. 361 “Meeting to Discuss FAU/FWRS Training, 1.7.43,” July 3, 1943, FRS/1992/18, Friends House Library. 362 “Meeting to Discuss FAU/FWRS Training, 1.7.43”; “Technical Training,” September 7, 1943, FRS/1992/18, Friends House Library.

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farms.363 He joined the FRS and began training at Mount Waltham in the fall of 1944. His experience in driving, particularly heavy trucks, afforded him the position of Transport Officer with the first team sent to Europe in March 1945.

By 1946, the FRS and FAU had taken measures to begin an amalgamation of the two organizations as a result of the changing nature of overseas relief towards that of a more “long- term nature.” In turn, the FRS acknowledged the importance of continuing the training of volunteers as drivers and mechanics. Hugh Maw joined the FRS and began training in January

1946, and by April transferred from the main training camp at Woodstock near Swiss Cottage,

London to the FRS driving course at Mount Waltham. Alongside twelve other FRS volunteers,

Maw, with no prior experience, trained in both driving and mechanics. After obtaining a driving license and driving for only a few weeks, Maw gained confidence in basic driving techniques such as double-clutching. Maw described his first lessons in mechanics:

The Bedford was stripped down and its ‘decarb progressed painfully slowly. I wondered if we’d ever get all the parts back together again, but it certainly taught us all about engines and went well with the lectures. We learned to listen to the various noises coming from the engines and other parts, correlate where they were coming from and why!364

His training in driving and lessons in mechanics secured him a position in transport, first in Berlin from June 1946 to June 1947 and in Cologne from October 1947 to March 1948.

Conclusions

363 Jenkins, Hugh Montfort. 364 Maw, The Training and Experience of a Quaker Relief Worker, 1946-1948, 47.

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Just as in the Great War, the foundation of the FAU in 1939 was motor transport and ambulance services. The Unit relied on volunteers coming to the organization with prior experience in driving as well as in mechanics, which proved a difficult assumption to maintain as the needs both at home and overseas increased in the first year of the war. In order to maintain their reputation as a reliable and efficient transport service and to continue to provide those services, the FAU had to develop a plan to train volunteers who, either because of their age or background, had neither the previous experience nor the opportunity to obtain skills necessary for the work.

The adaptation of the FAU training according to the needs overseas emphasizes the improvisation and flexibility of the FAU. The FAU did not create a training program entirely based on past experience, but instead responded the to the needs of the Unit and of populations suffering during the current war.

The FAU did not want to send members into the field with experience in driving alone but insisted that they should be able to fix and maintain their own vehicles. The specialized courses at

Hackney and Failand, followed by work in Unit owned or commercial garages indicates a desire by the FAU to have experts within team units when the opportunity to travel overseas arose.

Furthermore, by working in Unit owned or commercial garages, the Unit could retain their independence from outside organizations and would not depend on local services who needed aid.

This training also served a practical purpose for volunteers as there might not be services available overseas and during long transports. Similar to training in medical relief, the FAU responded to wartime needs by placing FAU employed members in domestic relief efforts as a means to continue building skills and assist populations in need after air raids.

When the FRS emerged as an overseas relief organization in 1943, the concern among the organization and within the FAU had been to avoid an overlap of services, particularly in the field

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of transport and ambulance service. The two organizations developed the Joint Transport

Organization as a means to address the challenge of overlap as well as ensure members of the FRS could also gain the necessary skills to be both a self-reliant and independent organization with regards to transport services. The FAU maintained their strong position within the training programs, especially since the FAU began sending teams abroad in 1939 and early 1940. The FRS, however, integrated members into the Hackney training course once it fell under the auspices of the Joint Transport Organization and continued training volunteers as late as 1946 as the FAU began a transition out of overseas relief.

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CHAPTER SEVEN: THE “REFUGEE PROBLEM”

The FAU and FRS envisioned their role in relief work as falling into three distinct stages.

The “first stage,” characterized by the willingness of relief workers to cooperate with military bodies during the final period of war, focused on assisting wounded and distressed civilians. Relief work in the “second stage,” however, was conducted separate from military bodies after war had ceased and focused on rehabilitation, emphasizing “self-help,” among suffering populations.

Finally, the “third stage” consisted of relief considered “long-term” in nature and focused on reconciliation among former hostile communities and peoples.

The FAU volunteers at Manor Farm held informal discussions during the war on the possibility and nature of a post-war refugee crisis, and the role the organization had in alleviating the suffering of those populations. Yet, FAU training camps did not include lectures dedicated to what the Unit, and later the FRS, conceptualized as the “second stage” or “third stage” of overseas relief work. The FAU was dedicated to the “first stage” of relief and trained volunteers accordingly.

The training program for women in the Unit at Barmoor had been designed to prepare women for

“second stage” work in domestic relief in air raid shelters and hostels in order to free male Unit members to engage in emergency relief work at home and abroad.

In contrast, FRS, understood their position in relief work as less “first stage” and more

“second stage.” For this reason, the training program at Mount Waltham included “technical instruction” on relief work including development of surveys, feeding schemes, organization and administration of refugee and DP camps.365 The program at Mount Waltham, as discussed earlier,

365 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 110; Whitworth, “Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre: Outline of the First Course, June-September, 1943.”

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was a collaborative effort thus any FAU volunteers had the opportunity to train alongside the FRS and gain particular insights into the “second and third stages” of relief work. The purpose of this chapter is to first examine the role of the FAU and the FWVRC in domestic relief efforts during the Battle of Britain, particularly with the setting up and administration of shelters and hostels for air raid victims, which will be followed with an assessment of the lectures given at Mount Waltham on refugee relief work.

The Battle of Britain and Domestic Relief

The experiences of aerial warfare during the First World War, particularly the Zeppelin and Gotha raids between 1915-1918, media coverage of the Spanish Civil War, and advancements in aircraft technology alerted the British government of the impact of modern warfare had on civilian populations. As a result of those experiences and in response to growing tensions emanating from the continent, various preparations by the government focused on the safety and morale of the civilian population.366 In 1935, the Air Raid Precautions Department of the Home

Office, previously a sub-committee under the chairmanship of the Permanent Under Secretary of

State for the Home Department in 1924, sought to maintain civilian morale, activities necessary for both the war effort and community, and reduce the destruction to life and property caused by air raids.367 In May 1938, plans were drawn for the evacuation of non-essential civilians—women,

366 Niko Gartner, Operation Pied Piper: The Wartime Evacuation of Schoolchildren from London and Berlin, 1938- 1946 (Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, Inc., 2012); Geoffrey Field, “Nights Underground in Darkest London: The Blitz, 1940-1941,” International Labor and Working-Class History 62 (2002): 11–49; Dietmar Süss, “Wartime Societies and Shelter Politics in National Socialist Germany and Britain,” in Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe, 1940-1945, ed. Claudia Baldoli, Andrew Knapp, and Richard Overy, trans. Richard Overy and Nick Terry (London: Continuum, 2011), 23–42; Robert Mackay, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain During the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003); Richard Overy, The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000); Richard Overy, 1939: Countdown to War (New York: Viking, 2009). 367 Mackay, Half the Battle, 31.

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children, and elderly—from major cities to the countryside in anticipation of an air war. In the fall of that year, family air raid shelters, known as “Anderson Shelters,” named after Sir John Anderson who oversaw civil defense, were made available to householders and small brick surface shelters to tenements. Based on fears that an air assault would include the use of poison gas, the government issued the population with gas masks and by September 1939 nearly forty-four million were distributed. Despite such efforts by the government to prepare civilians for an air war, there were several flaws: first, these plans were based on the belief that the attacks would be short in duration and during the daytime; second, the shelters distributed to families were determined to be unsafe in 1940; and finally, evacuation schemes were haphazard, many evacuees returned to the cities during and after the “Phoney War” only to have the schemes revived again.368

In October 1939, Adolf Hitler ordered the development of plans to seize the Netherlands,

Belgium, Luxembourg, and northern France and by May 1940 the German military moved west into Belgium and the Netherlands with both countries surrendering that same month and France the following month.369 The successful invasion of France resulted in an armistice signed between the two nations, which allowed Germany to establish an occupied zone northern France and an unoccupied “free zone” in the south, known as Vichy, France. Hitler assumed that with the occupation of France, Britain would seek a peace settlement. When Britain rejected any settlement with Germany, the German military developed “Operation Sealion,” which centered on the invasion of Britain by the German armed forces. For the operation to be successful, Hitler maintained that the Luftwaffe should have air superiority and eliminate the threat of the British

368 Field, “Nights Underground in Darkest London: The Blitz, 1940-1941,” 14. 369 Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 118–29; Williamson A. Murray and Geoffrey Parker, “The World in Conflict,” in The Cambridge History of Warfare (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 325–29; Martin Gilbert, The Second World War: A Complete History (Newburyport: RosettaBooks, 2014), 11–24.

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Royal Air Force. The German Luftwaffe began their attack on Britain in July 1940, focusing on coastal targets and moving inland to target airfields and communication centers. By August and

September, the attacks intensified, particularly in the first week of September when raids began on

London.370

The FAU and Quaker volunteers at the Bedford Institute Association, who would later join the reformed FWVRC, undertook relief work in three areas: in target areas below and above ground after heavy air raids; in evacuation hostels among elderly, handicapped, and unaccompanied children; and in welfare work with evacuees. The FAU concentrated on the first area of relief for approximately eighteen months. Although the Unit had been willing to assist in domestic relief, the organization viewed such work along similar lines to that done in hospitals— as a form of secondary training while members waited for overseas relief work. The women’s section of the FAU and the FWVRC assumed work in evacuation hostels, shelters, and rest centers from 1940 to the end of the war. As in other areas of domestic relief, the FAU and FRS members gained essential insights into the development of relief schemes and survey-making, as well as how to ensure aid distributed among populations in need would rebuild confidence and promote self-sufficiency.

On September 7, 1940, Tom Tanner, Peter Hume, and Richard Symonds of the FAU conducted a survey of rest centers, settlements, and air raid shelters. The Unit wanted to develop a report that would demonstrate the need and justify the assistance of the FAU. The report, presented at a Staff Meeting on September 18, led to an agreement within the Unit that members

370 Marc Wiggam, “The Blackout and the Idea of Community in Britain and Germany,” in Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe, 1940-1945, ed. Claudia Baldoli, Andrew Knapp, and Richard Overy (London: Continuum, 2011), 43–58; Overy, The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality; Richard Overy, “Pacifism and the Blitz, 1940-1941,” Past and Present 219 (2013); Field, “Nights Underground in Darkest London: The Blitz, 1940-1941”; Gartner, Operation Pied Piper: The Wartime Evacuation of Schoolchildren from London and Berlin, 1938-1946.

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should begin domestic relief under the direction of Tanner.371 The demand for domestic relief workers increased drastically with the destruction caused by air war. Initially, the FAU offered twelve men to assist in rest centers and by the end of the year there were nearly two hundred men providing services for air raid victims.372 The work of the FAU, along with Quakers from the BIA, however, was not without difficulty.

A Unit report from 1940 described the conditions in shelters as damp and overcrowded with an increasing threat of illness and disease.373 Addressing these serious problems necessitated more manpower from the FAU. When the FAU began work, a system of operation developed in the running of rest centers in London; the Unit men operated in twenty-four-hour shifts with two men per shift at six shelters. Shortly after beginning their work, the LCC allocated the Unit to the supervision of five shelters with three men alternated shifts.374 By the end of 1940, between four and six men were working in ten centers across London including in East End, Stoke Newington,

Westminster, and Paddington. 375 The focus of work in shelters included improvements to sanitation and health conditions and, more significantly, to develop shelters that could, over time, become self-sufficient. Drawing on notions of self-help, the FAU sought to build a sense of community and empower those staying in the shelters to manage their own shelter activities, maintain healthy and safe conditions, and provide care for each other.

After borrowing a film projector from the London Hospital, Stephen Peet along with fellow

Unit members, travelled to rest centers to show various films such as those with Charlie Champlain as entertainment. He later recalled, “It was suggested that I should make a film about the FAU. I

371 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 38–39. 372 Davies, 39. 373 “Weekly Information” (London, February 28, 1945), 12, MISC 256/3 FAU 9/1-2, Imperial War Museum. 374 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 44; “Weekly Information,” February 28, 1945, 13. 375 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 44.

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had a camera and the projector and did it over the first few months of 1941. I went all over the country filming little sequences of what the FAU were doing. One of the places I filmed was in what was called a ‘model air raid shelter’ in the city of London.”376 That shelter, at Royal Mail

House on Leadenhall Street, was recognized as a “model shelter” for its high standard of material comfort and sense of community. According to Davies the shelter, “attracted considerable attention and was publicized through the B.B.C. and through the press, while several of its innovations were introduced in other shelters.”377 Such innovations included: introduction of standard material comfort that would lend in the building of a “shelter community”; a committee was established from those who were among the shelterers and they were responsible for organizing the canteen, games, library, entertainment, and shelter funds.378 Additionally, the aim of empowering those living in the shelter by encouraging self-help had been realized as the FAU provided the information and tools to shelterers for the maintenance of proper sanitary conditions and shared their skills and knowledge of first-aid knowledge.

The policies and aims within the FAU and FWVRC, later FRS, working in air raid shelters and rest centers for families whose houses had been destroyed during the bombing could stay until resettled had been to work cooperatively and democratically with local services and authorities, as well as to encourage self-help among receiving populations. Lilian Cadoux worked at the FRS hostel in Wolverhampton before beginning a course at Mount Waltham. Of the management and running of the hostel, she later recalled the significance of “self-sufficient” hostels and encouraging self-help:

[The FRS] ran those hostels so well that in many cases they were taken over by the local authority after the war and the style was kept on. For instance, we didn’t let the old ladies just sit round the halls in arm chairs knitting and talking, staring into space. We asked them

376 Smith, Pacifists in Action, 85. 377 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the FAU in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 53. 378 Davies, 53; “Weekly Information,” February 28, 1945, 15; Smith, Pacifists in Action, 85, 89.

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if they would like to help, no obligation, and the more active ones used to help prepare vegetables and feel they were part of the team, which I thought was really lovely.379

The incorporation and engagement of receiving populations in the relief scheme had been an essential component to Quaker relief. Francesca Wilson later argued that such inclusion, whether through services or as participants in the creation and administration of a relief scheme, promoted self-respect and reflected the desire among the population to preserve their pride.380

One goal in creating a women’s section of the FAU was to train and integrate women into in air raid shelters and rest centers, where work became less concerned with emergency and medical relief service and more concern with the development of welfare and social service, would in turn release male FAU members for emergency relief services overseas as the opportunities became available. Following training at Barmoor, the work of Unit women centered on social services among evacuees and air raid victims, including in the development of youth clubs and programs, training programs for expectant and new mothers, as well as entertainment and activities for adults. The approach individual members took in air raid shelters and rest centers was varied.

One member wrote of the benefit of keeping children busy with hands-on activities, which for girls at Dockland became gardening. She wrote, “The girls under fourteen have recently started their own gardens where they are growing flowers and vegetables. One small child pulls up her onions every week for me to inspect and remark how much bigger they’ve grown and then solemnly plants them again.”381 Other members found outings to local parks and zoos constructive activities for giving children the space to play as well as for the fresh-air of the outdoors.382 When possible, teachers from local schools were brought into rest centers to give lessons, though many of the

379 Cadoux, Lilian Violet. 380 Wilson, “Advice to Relief Workers: Based on Personal Experience in the Field,” 6. 381 “F.A.U. Women’s Section News Letter.” 382 “F.A.U. Women’s Section News Letter.”

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members took it upon themselves to create libraries, provide art classes, or first aid lessons.383

Keeping children busy and occupied was a daytime component of shelter and rest center work, in the evenings members offered entertainment for adults including dances, concerts, and showing films.384

Although shelter work in London had still been considered “emergency” relief work by

December 1941, the FAU Executive Committee believed the nature of shelter work would become increasingly more of a “social work” nature that included child-care and club work. This marked the transition of male FAU members out of domestic relief in shelters and the increased presence of female Unit members and the FWVRC. Yet, the Unit acknowledged that some male members might be more inclined to continue work in shelters across Britain and could do so under the auspices of another organization, like the FWVRC.385 In 1941, an FAU survey of members determined which members wanted to continue domestic relief and those still eager to serve overseas; just over twenty-seven percent were anxious to go abroad, fifty-four percent would go abroad if asked, eighteen percent expressed interest in staying at home as they either had family commitments or felt “their primary duty is to do work” in Britain.386 By June 1942, thirty-four members of the FAU transferred to the FWRS, what later became the FRS, for hostel, club or settlement work in Britain, and just over one hundred were temporarily seconded to work in the

FWRS for the same purpose.

Domestic relief work provided by the FAU during the Battle of Britain afforded members with the opportunity to gain skills that the six-week training program at Manor Farm did not

383 “F.A.U. Women’s Section News Letter”; “Barmoor News.” 384 “Barmoor News”; “F.A.U. Women’s Section News Letter.” 385 “Executive Committee Report to the Staff Meeting,” December 8, 1941, MSS 876/FAU/1948/2/2, Friends House Library. 386 “Executive Committee Report to the Staff Meeting.”

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include, particularly those needed for services in public welfare and social work. The Battle of

Britain also led to the reinvigoration of the FWVRC; Friends with experience and training, or volunteers new to the field of relief began working alongside the FAU in hostels, shelters, and relief schemes throughout England. For volunteers to the FAU and FWVRC, the experiences of working with and among displaced Britons in air raid shelters, rest centers, and hospitals during the Blitz could be directly applied to overseas work both organizations hoped to engage in once the war was over. By 1943, volunteers to the FWVRC or FAU interested in expanding their experience in forms of relief associated with the “second stage” could join the newly created

Friends Relief Society and train at Mount Waltham.

Training for the “Refugee Problem” at Mount Waltham

The Mount Waltham lecture series on refugees, written in 1943, reflected the ways in which the FRS attempted to conceptualize a potential postwar refugee crisis by addressing the complexities involved in identifying various categories of refugees, the causes of displacement and movement, and the various solutions postwar authorities could take to address a crisis. As with other areas of training, the tools and skills for efficient refugee relief came from a variety of sources including an array of first-hand experiences from relief workers during the Great War and interwar years, reports from Europe and contemporary field experts. Trainees at Mount Waltham were advised that refugees “consist of soul, body, and passport,” which meant correctness of detail when obtaining information from an individual during an initial interview was paramount. The FRS believed relief workers should have the ability to identify and differentiate between various refugee populations, understand the cause of displacement or migration, and identify potential solutions to what contemporaries called the “refugee problem.”

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The second lecture of the series on refugees focused on the categories of refugees and identified four types of displaced populations, three of which retained the “protecting power” of nationality and statehood—the “expatriate,” the “evacuee,” and the “war fugitive.” An “expatriate” is an individual who fled from his or her country but not disowned by it, whereas an “evacuee” is an individual that has left home but remains in an area under the control of the same government.

The “war fugitive,” also an evacuee, is not part of an evacuation scheme, but instead fled their home or residence in an “extreme and sudden emergency.” The FRS defined the fourth group, the

“refugee,” as a person driven from their home by persecution or is compelled to flee in response to the government and, therefore, has no protecting power and is “stateless.” The FRS considered the category of “refugee” to include ethnic Germans, populations in occupied territories, and all

European Jews. Trainees were warned, however, that differentiation between the categories might prove difficult: “A refugee from Czechoslovakia might be a Czech, a Slovak, or a Sudeten German.

Or he might be a German or Austrian refugee who had fled to Czechoslovakia earlier.”387 An understanding of these distinctions demonstrated that the FRS understood the complexity of nationality, statehood, and wartime displacement in central Europe.

Bertha Bracy, Vice-Chairman of the FRS Committee, offered a lecture on migrations and movements of European populations immediately prior to and during the war. Bracey worked in central Europe with the British Quakers from 1921 to 1929, as Secretary for the Germany

Emergency Committee in 1933, and in 1939 aided in the rescue and emigration of Nazi victims, particularly children from Berlin. 388 She posited that, aside from Spanish Republicans who fled from Spain to France during the Spanish Civil War, Nazi domestic and foreign policies and the

387 “Course I: Refugees 2 The Refugee Problem” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 388 Maw, The Training and Experience of a Quaker Relief Worker, 1946-1948, 36; Friends Relief Service, “Homeless” (Friends Relief Service, April 1943), 93/27/2, Imperial War Museum.

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German war machine stimulated the movement of seven population groups. The “displaced populations” of Europe, though several overlap to some extent, included: refugees fleeing racial, political, or religious persecution; war fugitives, such as the “Free Governments” in England who fled Nazi occupation; deportees; Volksdeutsche; populations utilized for German labour demands; population transfers, intruded and/or extruded; and populations engaging in “Germanization” behind troops into occupied territories.389 She argued that these populations and the problems associated with mass movement needed to be understood and seriously considered for the development of plans and policies aimed at postwar reconstruction in Europe. Furthermore, knowledge of the causes of displacement and movement had the potential to inform a relief worker of the extent of suffering, both physical and psychological, experienced by an individual or group receiving aid, thus facilitating effective policies.

The lecture series, “Refugees,” also included three lectures dedicated to European Jews titled, “The Jews in Europe,” “Anti-Semitism in Europe,” and “Religious Beliefs & Observances of the Jews.” Essential to the three lectures was the way in which the information was presented.

In conjunction with offering a basic overview of contemporary events regarding the persecution of European Jews, the lectures also provided insight to trainees on Jewish culture and religious practices beginning in the eleventh century and extending into the twentieth century. In this way, the lectures revealed the viewpoint of the FRS as including Jewish populations in the category of

“refugee” as they emphasized their distinction as a population targeted specifically by the Third

Reich.

389 “Course I: Refugees 3 Migrations and Movements of Population” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; Bertha Bracey, “Europe’s Displaced Persons and Problems of Relocation,” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) 20, no. 2 (1944): 225.

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The lectures are not, however, without paradox. The lecture, “Anti-Semitism in Europe” suggests that the persecution experienced by Jewish populations produced “cunning” and the liberation of Jews will not necessarily or “immediately produce honesty.”390 Such instances are not exclusive to lectures on European Jews, but are found throughout various lecture series covering both European populations and contemporary history. The stereotypes of Jews in the early 1940s had been built and utilized by various societies over the course several centuries with the aim of promoting exclusionary policies, segregation, and persecution. Although the use and dangers of stereotyping will be discussed fully in chapter nine, it is worth pointing out here that, not unlike their contemporaries, the lectures on “refugees” at Mount Waltham included stereotypes of European Jews, which could produce discriminatory attitudes or relief practices by relief workers.

Recent studies on twentieth century refugee crises and humanitarian aid have addressed both the construction of refugee categories and the asymmetrical power dynamic between refugees and relief workers. The terms—such as “deportees,” “voluntary evacuees,” “infiltrees,” and

“undesirables”—represented different forms of “distance, dissidence and opposition to the nation state” and more often than not, such terms were created and defined not by the suffering population but by external authorities and relief agencies as they attempted to both categorize and regulate those populations and individuals living, physically or metaphorically, outside the nation state.391

In their work, Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War 1936-48,

Gemie et al. suggest three attitudes or modes of interpretation regarding refugee populations: first, suspicion towards those who are “rogues,” “subversives” and “opponents of the nation state”; the

390 “Course I: Refugees 4 Possible Solutions to the Refugee Problem” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 391 Gemie et al., Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War 1936-48, 5.

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second is compassion that imposes innocence and defenselessness on the individual or population and ignores agency; and the third, admiration, that positions the refugee as a hero driven by courage and resilience.392 The first interpretation coincides with the contemporary viewpoint that refugees posed a direct threat to wellbeing of the nation and so could not be trusted. The second interpretation, of “compassion,” dominated the ways in which governmental authorities and voluntary societies defined and classified refugee populations, which in turn supported the creation of new waves of outcast people and terms to identify them.393

Other works support these findings and emphasize the role of investigative journalism, wartime reporting, and first-hand accounts from relief workers in establishing contemporary attitudes towards refugee populations, with particular emphasis on national identity and citizenship in contrast to statelessness. 394 Peter Gatrell argues that non-governmental organizations that developed prior to and over the course of the twentieth century,

embody was an essential component in fashioning the modern refugee as a passive and ‘traumatized’ object of intervention as compared to the active, purposeful and much- travelled relief worker, a distinction that was not altered by the so-called shift from relief- based to rights-based humanitarianism.395

As suggested by the FRS in 1943, the relief worker travelled to aid suffering populations while enjoying the comfort of knowing that they had a nation—a “protecting power”—to return to and that “the relief worker” and “the refugee” had two distinct experiences that resulted in two distinct outlooks and personalities. A lecture titled “Relief Work for Refugees,” presents “the refugee” as a “special category” with a distinct “mentality” as a result of having “no roots” and “no stake” in

392 Gemie et al., 8. 393 Gemie et al., 5. 394 Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee; Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951 (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1989); Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism; Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924. 395 Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee, 8.

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society and therefore has no particular line to follow for social responsibility. Furthermore, the lecture suggested the desperate state of refugees fostered an over-confidence or “weak-kneed dependence on anyone who will help.”396 This is contrasted with the ideal relief worker who, as described in the lecture, is one who has the following five attributes: “an inner impulse above shock and disappointment”; “high moral qualities and perception of an archangel”; humility and sense of vocation; an “attitude that of ourselves we can do nothing,” in that intelligence and technical skill are secondary to the ability to “pass on some spark of vital creative life, so that refugees can begin to build their own lives”; and the ability to inspire confidence based on mutual trust, “though this must not mean that we believe everything said to us.”397 The relief worker having stability and roots, is at once humble and at the same time an angel of high rank, whereas the refugee, in the midst of chaos and without home or social responsibility, might be bold, reckless, or apathetic. Not all that dissimilar to stereotyping certain populations of refugees, the contention that relief workers and refugees have different outlooks or personalities risks the development of discrimination towards the refugee population receiving aid or condescension through pity.

“Possible Solutions to the Refugee Problem”

Echoing contemporary views on the crisis that refugees posed and solutions to the “refugee problem,” the FRS believed possible solutions included repatriation, absorption in the country of first refuge, and re-emigration for permanent refuge.398 The lecture, “Possible Solutions to the

396 “Course I: Refugees 1 Relief Work for Refugees” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 397 “Course I: Refugees 1 Relief Work for Refugees”; Gemie et al., Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War 1936-48, 7. 398 “Course I: Refugees 4 Possible Solutions to the Refugee Problem”; “Course I: Refugees 5 Possible Solutions to the Relocation Problem” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; Bracey, “Europe’s Displaced Persons and Problems of Relocation”; Kenneth G. Brooks, “The Re- Establishment of Displaced Peoples,” in When Hostilities Cease: Papers on Relief and Reconstruction Prepared for the Fabian Society (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1943), 99–124.

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Refugee Problem,” posits that although non-Jewish refugees will be unaware of the conditions of their home, they will nonetheless be “eager” to return, whereas European Jews will be less inclined to return home after the war. This view expressed by the FRS indicates not only an awareness of the crimes and atrocities committed against European Jews, but also suggests the organization understood European Jews comprised a special category. The policy of repatriation, particularly for European Jews, relied on specific physical and psychological conditions. The physical conditions included the restoration of normal rights as prescribed in the Atlantic Charter—the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.399

If the population did not experience or have such rights guaranteed, the FRS believed that, “In a

[long-term] sense it would be a political and cultural tragedy if Europe did not retain the Jewish population.”400 Psychologically, Jewish populations who experienced any amount persecution by the Nazi state, Nazi Allies, by neighbors, through press and propaganda might have some hesitancy in returning to a hostile community. Such hesitancy, or even backlash from local populations residing in those areas, would impede rehabilitation, community building, and a return to peace.

Thus, repatriation, as a short-term policy, should not be relied on, “except in the case of outstanding individuals or small groups” who had the protection of law and community.401

Following repatriation to one’s former state, the second possible solution, “absorption into the country of first refuge” was presented with both successful and unsuccessful examples. First, the lecture points to the prewar movement of German and German-Jewish fur merchants from

Leipzig to London with experience and skills that produced employment opportunities for

399 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Message to Congress, 1941,” 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, https://fdrlibrary.org/documents/356632/390886/readingcopy.pdf/42234a77-8127-4015-95af- bcf831db311d; “Course I: Refugees 4 Possible Solutions to the Refugee Problem.” 400 “Course I: Refugees 4 Possible Solutions to the Refugee Problem.” 401 “Course I: Refugees 4 Possible Solutions to the Refugee Problem.”

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Englishmen. The FRS reasoned that those refugees who receive consent of the government and display goodwill and loyalty could be a benefit to a country’s economy. As consumers, refugees create extra demand, but also are “known to have high administrative or scientific abilities” that support employment.402 Paralleling the economic argument for repatriation—that in a postwar environment, a country will need to manpower to rebuild the economy—a country that allows and supports the absorption of a refugee population can gain from the skills and abilities a refugee population has to offer.

The primary challenge to absorption of refugees, especially on an individual basis, is that of naturalization or in the taking up of “full responsibilities of citizenship.” The lecture posits that individuals who do not seek naturalization into a country, “make no real contributions as citizens.”403 The FRS used the German-American Association (Amerikadeutscher Volksbund) as a “serious example” of the risk involved in the absorption of refugees, yet the lecture does not offer detail or an explanation why. News headlines concerning the German-American Association in The Times between 1938 and 1942 indicate the association faced trials for failing to provide proper authorities with lists of active members as a group that required an oath, for “un-American” activities including the education of children in the “history of Herr Hitler and of Nazism rather than of American institutions” and calling for the sterilization of Jews, conspiracy to resist the

Selective Service Act and Alien Registration Act, and espionage.404 Thus, trainees familiar with

402 John Hope Simpson, “The Refugee Problem,” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931- 1939) 17, no. 5 (1938): 620; “Course I: Refugees 4 Possible Solutions to the Refugee Problem.” 403 “Course I: Refugees 4 Possible Solutions to the Refugee Problem.” 404 From Our Special Correspondent, “Espionage Trials In America,” The Times, July 22, 1942, The Times Digital Archive; From Our Special Correspondent, “Germans in the U.S.A.,” The Times, May 7, 1938, The Times Digital Archive; From Our Special Correspondent, “German-American Bund Activities,” The Times, July 8, 1942, The Times Digital Archive; From Our Special Correspondent, “Nazi Teaching In America,” The Times, August 19, 1939, The Times Digital Archive.

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those and other news articles would have had some idea that some elements, most likely of German nationality, in the United States had positive inclinations towards German Nazism.

There are, however, two interesting points to be made about the German-American

Association and naturalization. First, the association was established in the United States in 1936 by Fritz Kuhn who was, in fact, a naturalized American citizen; thus the suggestion that

“naturalized” refugees or immigrants pose less of a risk or are more willing to express loyalty to their new nation is challenged by this particular example. The demographic of members in the association, however, provides some evidence to support the assumptions made by the FRS. In his work, Hoods and Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania, 1925-1950, Philip Jenkins argues that although membership of the association is difficult to assess, the original society had two hundred members, of which 138 were mostly German citizen aliens and at its height the branch could claim membership of at least several hundred.405 Although this provides some insight into why the FRS used the association as an example, it could be argued that the FRS simply wanted to provide what seemed like a relevant, extreme and dramatic, example of a failure to integrate into society rather than one that trainees might have little familiarity with or one that might be too complex to draw comparatives to in the limited time available in a training course.

The FRS also expressed hesitancy towards the third solution, “Re-emigration,” which could be implemented through either individual emigration schemes or large-scale re-settlement.

The FRS lecture argues the conditions of a successful “Re-Emigration” with either scheme included capital investment for the establishment of services in the region receiving the population could only be successful if enough capital investment was available to establish services for the

405 Philip Jenkins, Hoods and Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania, 1925-1950 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 142–43.

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emigrating population and if the emigrating population consisted of, “young, skilled, healthy and tough” people. These conditions, however, would be difficult to meet in the postwar period.406

The FRS considered European Jews the “bulk of the problem,” therefore the examples given for “re-emigration” include the individual settlement of Jews in the United States and large- scale settlement in Palestine. The lecture suggests that the individual absorption of Jews into the

United States was “reasonably successful in the past,” whereas large-scale settlements of Jews in

Palestine would “immediately raises the question of Jew-Arab relations.” 407 The evident hesitancy of the FRS to fully support large-scale settlement stems from contemporary events regarding the

British position of colonial rule in Palestine. During the Great War, the British supported the

Zionist movement of Jews emigrating to Palestine with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the gradual migration of Jews over the 1920s. After Hitler came to power in 1933, the population of

European Jews in Palestine more than doubled, which resulted first in a general strike led by the

Higher Arab Committee in 1936 and grew to armed revolt by 1937.408 In response to the Arab

Revolt and increased tensions on the European continent that suggested a coming war, the British backed out of their previously held support of Zionism in favor of protecting imperial interests and recovering good-will with the Arab leaders of Palestine. 409 The FRS believed any postwar international settlements should aim to “release the tension of minority problems” rather than risk increased refugee populations or even exacerbate friction to the point of conflict.

None of the potential solutions identified in the lectures, however, could be successfully implemented without a stand-still order and the building and establishment of temporary or semi-

406 “Course I: Refugees 4 Possible Solutions to the Refugee Problem.” 407 “Course I: Refugees 4 Possible Solutions to the Refugee Problem.” 408 Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, 117. 409 “The Arab Revolt,” accessed July 29, 2019, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-1936-arab-riots; Jamie Bronstein and Andrew Harris, eds., Empire, State, and Society: Britain since 1830 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 186; Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, 117.

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permanent refugee camps. Estimates approximated thirty million Europeans would be on the move after the war, though the FRS had been apprehensive about offering trainees “complete statistics” that might be out-of-date or misrepresent the crisis. Nevertheless, trainees were told, “This extent of movement can wreck any plans that may be coming into operation for food relief. It can also cause the spread of various diseases which are at present fairly localized (e.g. malaria, typhus,

V.D., tuberculosis, deficiency diseases).”410 The FRS believed the piecemeal liberation of Europe by Allied troops would support the creation and administration of refugee camps on a gradual basis, which might prevent the spread of disease, food shortages and distribution difficulties, and the chaos that would certainly accompany the immediate conclusion of war. Therefore, following the issue of a “stand-still order” and the creation of temporary camps, relief teams could attend the organization of displaced groups and promote rehabilitation as European governments developed plans for relocation or begin repatriation of the many “refugees.”

Administration of a Refugee Camp

The first step in developing a temporary or semi-permanent refugee camp was conducting a survey of the area and populations in need. In her “Advice to Relief Workers” pamphlet,

Francesca Wilson suggests that social surveys had become a “highly skilled business” and simplified for the relief worker amid an emergency. She cites her experience as a part of team of six British volunteers in Hungary in 1939 and 1940. In providing aid to 50,000 male Polish refugees in internment camps, three team members visited the camps to report on the numbers, general conditions, and special needs of the population. The team reported that many of the men were housed in abysmal conditions and required wood for bunks, mattress covers and straw, stoves

410 “Course I: Refugees 5 Possible Solutions to the Relocation Problem.”

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for heat and bathing installations.411 After receiving the reports, the central office located in

Budapest developed a plan to deliver the materials and manpower need. The first survey of the camps ensured the team could begin with basic requisitioning of materials for shelter, without which any relief provided would have been complicated or hindered—especially with regards to the overall health of the men interned. Wilson concluded that, “For amateurs a questionnaire should be drawn up, and survey-making should be included in all training.”412 After conducting a survey outlining the needs of the camp and assisting in construction or reconstruction of the camp site and provide material relief, the teams could begin rehabilitation relief. The FRS believed a successful refugee camp had several interconnected components: first, engage in democratic relief by encouraging the population receiving aid to be an active agent in their rehabilitation; second, provide the space for the populations to build a community; and third, encourage spiritual rehabilitation through occupation and education.

The FRS advised trainees on the challenges implicit in establishing and administrating a camp. The very nature of a camp and the necessity of discipline cultivated a “subconscious irritation” and “unusual aggressiveness” among camp residents.413 This stemmed from the lack of privacy and freedom, differences in religious and political views, socio-economic status, and

“refugee status.” The Camp Commandant, appointed by military or local police authorities, would take on the task of overseeing discipline within the camp, as the camp residents could establish self-government through a representative system to ensure camp policies and rules were adhered to. Based on previous experience with refugee camps in Spain and France between 1937 and 1940, the FRS suggested one representative for each one hundred people with a committee of ten that

411 Wilson, “Advice to Relief Workers: Based on Personal Experience in the Field,” 3. 412 Wilson, 4. 413 “Course I: Refugees 7 Camp Psychology” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library.

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would manage a unit of one thousand, and one representative from each unit of one thousand manage the whole camp. The lecture, “The Administration of Refugee Camps,” posited that,

“People in a unit of this size can build up friendships and social responsibilities.”414 For example, the representatives could form an internal court to deal with offenses against both the camp and laws of the country. One of the concerns presented in a lecture on camp psychology was the black market. Trainees were warned, “Much stealing happens in camps, especially stealing of food from kitchens [.] Black market activities are sometimes present."415 Crime and idleness could be averted by enlisting and recruiting the refugee population to assist in camp occupations and administration.

Only after the establishment of discipline within the camp could welfare work begin. The

FRS suggested the relief team appoint a welfare officer, who after attaining the confidence of the receiving population, would be to provide information and advice, act as a liaison between the camp and outside organizations, as well as ensure “mental balance” and spiritual rehabilitation among refugees.416 The lectures recommend that any information given to refugees should come official sources only since many regarded temporary or semi-permanent camps as “hotbeds of rumour.” Thus, members were warned, “Be very guarded in all statements. […] People seem completely unable to repeat statements accurately.”417 Clear communication—whether by using a translator or, preferably, a relief worker with advanced knowledge of the language spoken by

DPs—was imperative for camp order. Therefore relief teams needed to obtain and offer detailed information and explanations over a loudspeaker, if possible, to ensure the accurate information reached the majority of the camp population.

414 “Course I: Refugees 6 The Administration of Refugee Camps (with Particular Reference to Spain and France 1937-40).” 415 “Course I: Refugees 7 Camp Psychology.” 416 “Course I: Refugees 8 Some Administrative Problems in Camps and Temporary Communities” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 417 “Course I: Refugees 7 Camp Psychology.”

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An essential component of rehabilitation relief was “self-help,” thus trainees were advised to encourage camp residents to pursue occupations and establish educational and cultural activities.

Neither the welfare worker nor relief team as a whole should take on the task of making all the arrangements, but instead encourage the populations to take on the task themselves as a means of rehabilitation and self-help. Initial intake interviews provided relief teams with details on where an individual might be best utilized within the camp. Refugees with certain occupational backgrounds could apply their skills to specific duties in the camp; as an example, shop-keepers would be best placed as food distributors. 418 Based on her experiences, Francesca Wilson advocated for the idea of apprenticeship and vocational training:

It is usually easy to find amongst the refugee’s shoemakers, joiners and dressmakers, but more difficult, those willing to teach their craft to others. A good deal of propaganda has to be made, not only to induce them to do this, but to persuade the refugees to learn. Amongst Serbs this was easy, as our experience with the disabled in Bizerta in 1917 showed. Serbs were all actual or potential craftsmen and used to the apprenticeship idea. The Spanish girls were eager to learn sewing and their dressmakers were good teachers. […] Workshops of a mechanical type always excite interest in the modern world, and there will be plenty of abandoned lorries after this war to pick to pieces.419

Wilson believed such activities and training, if supplies and materials allowed, could serve as educational, therapeutic, and also build up the “egos of the refugees.”

The care and rehabilitation of children had been a particular concern of the FAU and the

FRS; both groups actively encouraged learning activities and play time in shelters and hostels during the Battle of Britain and the lectures given at Mount Waltham emphasized those activities with regard to the particular care of refugee children. Just as with adult refugees, trainees needed to be aware of the psychological impact of both the war and refugeedom on children. The lectures

418 “Course I: Refugees 6 The Administration of Refugee Camps (with Particular Reference to Spain and France 1937-40).” 419 Wilson, “Advice to Relief Workers: Based on Personal Experience in the Field,” 22–23.

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stress that although physical relief for illness and famine among children is significant, the emotional life and welfare of a refugee child is equally important.

“The Care of Children” instructed trainees that each camp should construct a nursery, day nursery, and playroom for babies and children up to the age of seven with the enlistment of parents or trained teachers and, if possible, establish a parents’ club. 420 For children between the ages of seven and fourteen, the lecture cautions that refugee children in this particular age group are “very precocious,” which was believed to be due to a lack of formal education and association with adults.

For a “transient camp” the lecture recommends relief workers establish a playroom with “positive activities to occupy their minds,” whereas semi-permanent camps should initiate schooling or individual work suitable to their age. The lecture advises:

New, and probably unorthodox methods will probably be required for this group (e.g. children may need to have some responsibility for their own affairs). The need is for rehabilitation and re-adaptation. Practical work, such as gardening and carpentry, will probably be found useful, as the children will at least reflect the reaction towards self pity of the adults.421

The FRS considered “children” to be between the ages of newborn and fourteen, which reflected education reform after the Great War. The 1918 Act in Britain changed the age at which a child could leave school from twelve to fourteen.422 The category of “child” existed somewhere between nineteenth century conceptions of middle-class children entitled to both play-time and education and the working-class child whose family relied on their participation in labor. Tara Zahra argues that during wartime Europe, “[T]he category of the child was (and remains) deceptively universal.

It obscures the extent to which differences of time, place, and geography have shaped both the

420 “Course I: Refugees 11 The Care of Children” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 421 “Course I: Refugees 11 The Care of Children.” 422 “Education Bill,” March 13, 1918, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1918/mar/13/education- bill.

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definition of childhood and how childhood is experienced.”423 She points out that like adult refugees, a child’s experience of war could differ according to a variety of intersections of identities—“nationality, race, religion, gender, social class, and age.”424 That the FRS do not include these considerations in their lectures is indicative of the period and the circumstance; few voluntary relief organizations considered an individual “child” beyond the age of fourteen. Even if the terminology of “child” were defined at all, the impact of the war and the damage inflicted— such as the loss of home, the loss of parents, and witness violence—on a child could not be fully understood prior to entering the field and in preparation for establishing camp life.

Conclusions

The Battle of Britain served as a pivotal moment for the FAU and FRS training programs.

Although the FAU primarily focused on emergency and medical relief services in the training program at Manor Farm, when the Battle of Britain began the FAU utilized the skills gained from earlier training to provide assistance and aid in emergency situations as they simultaneously gained experience in the “second stage” of relief during their work in shelters, hostels, and rest centers.

The FRS, as a collaborative organization of the FAU and FWVRC, received and recruited volunteers who worked in relief programs or with other organizations to provide aid during the

Battle of Britain. Those volunteers took their experience with them and further developed their skills at Mount Waltham where the training program incorporated theoretical and practical lessons and lectures in refugee relief in an effort to prepare all volunteers to efficiently and effectively confront the anticipated postwar “refugee problem.”

423 Tara Zahra, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2015), 9. 424 Zahra, 9.

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As with other aspects of the training programs at Mount Waltham, the FRS utilized experienced relief workers as well as field experts as instructors and integrated contemporary reports and research in an attempt to give a full picture of what Europe might face at the end of the war and in the immediate postwar period. In doing so, the FRS underscored three developments associated with “planning-mindedness”: first, the legal construction of refugee status and the terms coined to identify, categorize, and classify distinct groups of refugees; second, the integration of smaller voluntary organizations into a larger “plan” by intergovernmental organizations aimed at the coordination of aid and solutions to displacement; and third, the systematic and technical approach to refugee camp management and administration. These developments and the translation of them into lessons at the FRS training camps characterizes what Michael Foucault has termed, “governmentality,” which he argues is:

The ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security.425

Significantly, the FRS also drew on traditional core principles from earlier Quaker philanthropy which distinguished them from their larger international counterparts. In conjunction with contemporary developments in humanitarian practices and discourses, the FRS also integrated traditional conceptualizations of relief work. Based on prior experience, the FRS believed that the creation of a community, the active and democratic participation of receiving populations in the administration of the camp, the building of social and cultural activities, and supporting in-camp and out-of-camp occupations promoted both self-help and rehabilitation.

425 Michael Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 87–104. See also: G. Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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Although the concept of and belief in “self-help” derives the from nineteenth century notion that an individual should “pull oneself up by the bootstraps” that had been popularized by Samuel

Smiles and the Victorian middle-classes, here the FRS understood the concept as multifaceted and beneficial to the overall aim of their work in rebuilding communities in postwar humanitarianism.

The FRS believed that by promoting self-help—development of cultural and educational programs, aiding in the construction of workshops, and integrating the receiving population into the management and administration of the camp—had the potential to provide physical as well as psychological rehabilitation in the aftermath of trauma.

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CHAPTER EIGHT: RELIEF AND REHABILITATION

In 1949, Roger Wilson, General Secretary of the FRS, presented a lecture on Quaker relief work during and after the Second World War at the annual Swarthmore Lectureship at

Woodbrooke Quaker Study Center in Birmingham. On the nature of relief work, Wilson observed:

Most relief work begins with some obvious physical need. But almost always there is, behind the physical need, something much less concrete, a damaged or lonely or hopeless or hungry spirit, and relief work which does not penetrate to this level, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, and make some contribution to healing is a job only partially done.426

For volunteers to engage in relief work aimed at the spiritual and social needs of a suffering population, the training program at Mount Waltham included courses in European languages, discussions on contemporary European history, and background on different European nations and populations. Collectively, the FRS hoped to instill a sense of unity and understanding among the

British volunteers towards the European populations so that once in Europe relief workers could begin the process of reconciliation through internationalism. The first section of this chapter is an examination of the role of internationalism in Quaker life and thought, and how internationalism was promoted through “Quaker Centers” during the interwar years. The last two sections will then turn to the lectures offered at Mount Waltham, and the significance of the integration of European language courses.

Quaker Centers

All Quakers believe that every individual—regardless of differences in appearance, political or religious beliefs, or ability—has an “Inner Light” that, active or latent, strives for

426 Wilson, Swarthmore Lecture, 1949, 15.

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harmonious living.427 That every individual has an Inner Light means that the fate of all men and women are intertwined—when one person or group is suffering, everyone is suffering—this is the

“brotherhood of all mankind.” For Quakers, the unity of fate motivated them to educate themselves on the suffering of others and in turn engage in reform movements, relief work, and welfare programs within their local communities as well as on an international level.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the British Society of Friends reflected their interest in the international concerns by inquiring and reporting on political, social, and economic problems. The initial goal had been to inform the Quaker communities on local, national, and international reform movements as abolition, temperance, penal and education reform, as well as national and international conflicts.428 The goal expanded as Friends began providing the information to the wider public through the publication of their findings and reports in periodicals and pamphlets, they held discussion and study groups, and fostered the building of networks and channels abroad as a means to continue gathering information. 429 Many of the international channels and networks created by the Friends were the result of their humanitarian work during and after the Napoleonic Wars, the Irish Potato Famine, and the Franco-Prussian War. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, disillusioned with the influence of Evangelicalism on

Quakerism, young British Quakers initiated the “Quaker Renaissance” to refocus on the foundations of Quakerism that espoused the “Inner Light” and the peace testimony, which then enticed Friends into the world of international politics. The engagement of Quakers in the international community increased into the early twentieth century, particularly during and after

427 Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy, 3–4; Yarrow, Quaker Experience in International Conciliation, 2; Punshon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers, 48. 428 Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy, 54–57; Punshon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers, 167– 71, 186–88. 429 Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy, 54–55.

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the Great War when pacificism and internationalism became linked and materialized with the establishment of “Quaker Embassies.”

A lecture series in “Quakerism” at Mount Waltham highlighted the building of Quaker

Embassies, later Quaker Centers, during the interwar period as evidence of the dedication among

Friends to fostering reconciliation and rebuilding positive attitudes towards a new way of life through internationalism. Located in eight major cities including Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, the

Quaker Centers were first proposed by Carl Heath in 1917 to serve as an unofficial diplomatic service dedicated to every aspect of human life—physical, mental, and spiritual.430 In 1920, Heath published Quaker Embassies, in which he described the purpose of the Embassies was to, “bring the foreigner to us and learn from him as well as bring our message to them.”431 C.H. Mike Yarrow points out that Heath believed any action of goodwill, “from the cup of water to the lecture on disarmament,” was considered reconciliation and an important work of Christ on earth. He writes,

For Heath, Christ and his teaching were central, but he thought in terms of a new kind of evangelism which would not be trying to make Christians or bring members into the Society of Friends, but would be spreading Quaker ideas and ways of dealing with situations of conflict. He was wont to say that he was not trying to preach Quakerism but to find friends.432

One lecture given at Mount Waltham, “The Development of Quaker Life and Thought,

1918-1939,” suggests the creation of a better world would be impossible if based on the notion and action of “we to them.”433 The lecture reads, “The centres represented the notion of rebuilding a postwar world that encouraged peace and good will, as well as continuing the tradition of

430 Friends World Committee for Consultation, Friends in Europe: Handbook of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Europe (London: Headley Brothers, 1946), 99; Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy, 153–54; “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918 - 1939” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 431 Carl Heath, Quaker Embassies, 2nd ed. (Oxted, Surrey: Privately Printed, 1920), 10. 432 Yarrow, Quaker Experience in International Conciliation, 25. 433 “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918 - 1939.”

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fostering international networks among like-minded people.”434 Thus, the staff and personnel of the Centers after 1919 were composed of British, American, local Quakers and non-Quakers with the aim of building international channels and networks, foster programs and discussions directed at solutions to contemporary problems, and supporting the growing Quaker movement in

Germany. 435 The Centers, established between 1919 and 1925, had not been regarded as

“institutions” of sorts, but instead as a community of, “dedicated personalities working together to create something that is living.”436 Although the Centers were rooted in spiritual tenants and encouraged the Quaker principle of the Inward Light—that God is in every man—volunteers were told the imposition of an “Anglo-American Quakerism on the Continent” would be disastrous.437

Heath’s sentiments on proselytizing were reflected in the action of American and British

Friends in the Centers and the FRS emphasized this in their assertion that although volunteers should embody the values of the Society of Friends, the organization did not seek to convert non-

Quakers within the organization or among populations receiving aid. The lecture on Quaker life and thought notes: “In international work in general it is highly important to overcome political and religious barriers and to try to get people to understand positive peace which expresses itself in action. It is well to make the widest contacts and not to have preconceptions of what people of other religions are like.”438 Scholars Robert Byrd and Hans Schmitt argue that as Quakerism expressed tolerance towards other faiths and cultures by believing in the unity of all mankind, many Quakers believed humanitarian service presided over attempts made to persuade others to accept Quakerism or other particulars of the Quaker way of life.439 Byrd writes, “To bring pressure

434 “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918 - 1939.” 435 “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918 - 1939”; Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy, 154. 436 “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918 - 1939.” 437 “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918 - 1939.” 438 “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918 - 1939.” 439 Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy, 18; Schmitt, Quakers and Nazis: Inner Light in Outer Darkness, 13.

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of any kind to bear to encourage a person to accept a set of religious beliefs, authorities, and procedures seems to those Friends to be a violation of the personalities of those towards whom such pressure is directed.” 440 By the 1920s, British Quaker “missionary activities” of the nineteenth century had clearly begun to erode; the Friends Foreign Mission Association united with the Council for International Service to form the new Friends Service Council (FSC). The

FSC concerned itself less with missionary activity and more with relief, reconstruction, and social justice.441 Thus, the Centers provided a vantage point for active interwar service aimed at gathering information on the conditions and challenges faced by European populations, and to promote peaceful dialogue across different ethnic or national groups.

The first initiatives of the post-Great War Centers were focused on the minority problems arising from the Treaty of Versailles during the interwar period. The creation of a “Students Club” at the Berlin Center represented a particularly significant instance of reconciliation. A bulletin by the American Friends Service Committee, “Creative Experience in International Relations,” notes that although the club began in the “old days of student aid” had by 1936 over three-hundred members—“Aryan” and “non-Aryan,” men and women, students and professors, “of all shades of political, social, and religious thinking”—who met for lectures, discussions, social evenings, or

“country rambles.”442 For example, after the creation of the Polish Corridor by the Treaty of

Versailles, Friends at the Berlin Center brought together university students from Germany and

Poland in 1925, 1926, and 1927. The conferences aimed to discuss problems occurring in the

440 Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy, 18. 441 “Mission Work,” accessed August 28, 2019, http://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/320/-Mission- Work; Punshon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers, 236. 442 The American Friends Service Committee, “Creative Experience in International Relations” (Philadelphia: The American Friends Service Committee, 1936), 5.

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Polish Corridor, Upper Silesia, and other places with German minorities, all with the hopes of beginning a process of reconciliation.443

The Berlin Center was not the only Quaker Center to engage in such activities; the Center in Vienna held the “Forum,” or Students Club, that included four-hundred students and former students who met up to eight times a month for discussions on international affairs and social service.444 Over the course of the 1920s, the Forum included lectures given by leaders from religious and political institutions and classes in law, literature, drama, and economics. In his history of Quaker relief, John Greenwood notes that the Forum also offered the opportunity for

Austrian members to travel to England and the United States to practice English, and during the rise of Fascism in central Europe the Forum raised funds to help Social Democratic students continue their studies.445

The escalation of Nazi policies between 1933 and 1939 targeted “non-Aryan Christians” and Jews and led to marginalization, discrimination, and physical violence. Witnessing the gradual nature of persecution of those groups, the American, British, and German Quakers in Berlin— themselves not initially targets of Nazi persecution—reached out and offered assistance. Schmitt argues that those actions “implied disapproval of such policies, and attitude that strained the credibility of Quaker insistence that they had nothing to do with politics. This contradiction, coupled with the police’s awareness of it, placed the Quaker presence in Berlin in constant jeopardy.”446 Corder Catchpool, a British Quaker who served with the FAU in France during the

Great War, returned to Germany to assist as a representative at the Berlin Center. According to

443 Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy, 160; Yarrow, Quaker Experience in International Conciliation, 28; Roger Carter, “The Quaker International Center in Berlin, 1920-1942,” The Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society, no. 56 (1990): 19. 444 The American Friends Service Committee, “Creative Experience in International Relations,” 7; Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 232. 445 Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 232. 446 Schmitt, Quakers and Nazis: Inner Light in Outer Darkness, 54.

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historian Hans Schmitt, following the April 1933 anti-Jewish boycott in Germany the Berlin

Center was, “inundated with letters describing what happened in a variety of German venues,” and

Catchpool began sending those letters with foreign visitors returning home to the United States or

Britain.447 Catchpool contacted the British embassy to set-up a meeting in order to discuss what position or further action the Friends should take in light of the events, yet before a meeting could take place Catchpool and his wife, Gwen, were arrested by the Gestapo. 448 A SS neighbor denounced the Quaker couple as Communists and pacifists that reported on the persecution and mistreatment of opponents to the Nazi regime.449 Catchpool spent just over a day at the Gestapo headquarters before being released on the advisement to not leave Berlin. Schmitt argues that the result of the incident only fueled Catchpool’s resolve to understand the rise of German Nazism, to make friends with them in an effort to prevent another war, and to hope that the Germans as well as their leaders wanted peace just as sincerely as people across Britain did.450

A second initiative by British and American Quakers working in German Quaker Centers became known as the Kindertransport. After the Kristallnacht, “Night of Broken Glass,” on

November 9 and 10, 1938, the Quaker Center in Berlin attempted to construct a plan dedicated to altering German policies toward the restricted emigration of German Jewish victims.451 Although mass emigration for German Jews had been the aim of Quakers, such a plan exceeded their resources and thus the organization turned their attention to the rescue of Jewish children. Working collaboratively with various relief organizations, such as the Save the Children Fund, the Germany

447 Schmitt, 62. 448 Schmitt, 62. 449 Achim Von Borries, Quiet Helpers: Quaker Service in Postwar Germany, ed. Peter Daniels, trans. John Cary, Cathy Cary, and Hildegard Wright (London and Philadelphia: Quaker Home Service and American Friends Service Committee, 2000), 27–28; Schmitt, Quakers and Nazis: Inner Light in Outer Darkness, 62; Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief, 261; Carter, “The Quaker International Center in Berlin, 1920-1942,” 21. 450 Schmitt, Quakers and Nazis: Inner Light in Outer Darkness, 63. 451 Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy, 154; Von Borries, Quiet Helpers: Quaker Service in Postwar Germany, 33–34.

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Emergency Committee and Friends in Britain, the Anglo-American Quaker personnel in Berlin arranged for the transport of approximately 10,000 Jewish children to Britain beginning in

December 1938.452

Although relief efforts at the Berlin Center slowed after 1939, the Center remained open until February 3, 1945 when an air raid damaged the building beyond repair. Although it is unclear whether or not the FRS anticipated the reestablishment of the Quaker Centers following the end of the war, the Centers offered an illustration of the importance of building local contacts—evident in first stage relief work—as the Centers would require cooperation and collaboration with local community leaders, organizations, and officials to be successful in rebuilding community. Central to building relationships with the local community were language skills, which will be discussed in-depth later, and the “inner attitude” of the individual relief worker. The FRS advised that, “All workers should feel themselves to be Europeans hoping to restore this Europe of ours. If this attitude is deeply felt, it will be possible to elicit friendship even in an enemy country. It is possible to touch the heart of even the most ruffianly looking individual.”453 By including an overview of contemporary European history, discussions on European populations, and European language courses in the training program at Mount Waltham, the FRS hoped to inspire and foster a sense of connection between individual volunteers and the “European community” that could, in turn, promote internationalism in the postwar period.

452 Von Borries, Quiet Helpers: Quaker Service in Postwar Germany, 36; The National Archives, “Kindertransport: Britain’s Rescue Plan,” text, Archives Media Player, February 26, 2010, https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/kindertransport-britains-rescue-plan/. 453 “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918 - 1939.”

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Contemporary European History and European Populations

In order to facilitate successful post-war rehabilitation and reconciliation, the FRS believed its volunteers should be armed with knowledge, in particular an understanding of recent European history. An outline of the first course to be given at Mount Waltham between June and September

1943 described the series on contemporary European history as one that concerns, “the European background, historical, religious, political and cultural: animosities, hopes and aspirations; contemporary and probably future circumstances.”454 Despite the extensiveness of the lecture series, the FRS believed that knowledge of recent events in Europe might be “taken for granted” among volunteers. The FRS advised that in preparation for the series, volunteers read a selection of works such as “The Refugee Problem” by Sir J. Hope Simpson, International Relations since the Peace Treaties by E.H. Carr, and A History of Europe by H.A.L. Fisher.455

Simpson’s article, given as a lecture at Chatham House in 1938, discussed the “refugee” of the post-1919 period with an emphasis on the shortcomings of contemporary legal definitions of refugees and complications of “statelessness” status, the ways in which various states dealt with refugees and how those aspects could be implemented in the management of a refugee crisis. He also discussed the rise of anti-Semitism in western societies. Published in 1937, Carr’s work offers an overview of how economic, political, and military factors shaped international relations between 1920 and 1936. In contrast to Carr’s concise work, A History of Europe, published in various editions between 1935 and 1938 comprised three volumes covering the ancient and medieval period, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and “The Liberal

454 Whitworth, “Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre: Outline of the First Course, June-September, 1943.” 455 Whitworth; H.A.L. Fisher, A History Of Europe, vol. 2, 3 vols. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1938), http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.351421; T. W. Riker, review of Review of A history of Europe, by H. A. L. Fisher, The Journal of Modern History 9, no. 1 (1937): 64–66; E.H. Carr, International Relations Since the Peace Treaties (New York: Macmillan Company, 1937); Simpson, “The Refugee Problem.”

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Experiment.” A 1937 review of the work suggests the work, not necessarily intended as a textbook, can be appreciated by layman and scholar alike. The reviewer writes, “The well-read adult who possesses an easy chair and a taste for history is afforded an opportunity of passing—say—three delightful evenings, and incidentally of adding much to his store of knowledge.”456 The reviewer was, however, critical of the lack of attention given to the Russian Revolution in 1917 and

Germany after the Great War. Nevertheless, these works, accompanied by several others, provided a background on Europe and an analysis of events and movements that shaped Europe in 1943.

The lecture series served as an overview and compliment to the suggested readings with each series broken down into four topics: first, an overview of economic and political events between 1919 and 1939; the second includes national histories focused France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Romania,

Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Jugoslavia; the third discusses various European religions; and the final two lectures discuss the rise and nature of Fascism, Nazism, Social

Democracy, and Communism in Europe.

An overview of the interwar years sought to both clarify a complex era and help present trainees with a new world view. The first two lectures, covering international events and problems between 1919 and 1939, describe the twenty years as riddled with “bitterness,” “resentment,”

“crisis,” and “failure.”457 For example, the lectures suggest the attempts made by the Treaty of

Versailles to assign guilt, determine reparations, and redraw the map of Europe served only to

456 Riker, “Review of A History of Europe,” 64. 457 “Course I: European Background 1 Europe 1919-1930” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; “Course I: European Background 2 European History, 1929-39” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; “Course I: European Background 3 France” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; “Course I: European Background 4 Germany” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; “Course I: European Background 8 Hungary and Bulgaria” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library; “Course I: European Background 24 Current Trends in Post-War Thought” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library.

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exacerbate geopolitical tensions, particularly those between Germany and France. In the post-1919 period, the Society of Friends actively engaged in international relations and policies by focusing on resolving problems of economic want, social and political injustice as they opposed the “self- righteous effort to assess guilt” and preserve peace through sanctions that formed the foundation of the Treaty of Versailles.458 Yet, rather than offer a detailed analysis on the years or in-depth discussions on international attitudes. The FRS recognized that an intensive study on the interwar years was not practical for such a short training course, yet at the same time they wanted volunteers to understand the implications of recent events and to be less “insular in […] outlook.”459 Thus, the lecture series included national histories to compliment to the broad overview offered in the first two lectures.

The national histories offer insight into the political, economic, and to a lesser extent, social dynamics of the individual countries and the populations within. Each lecture is varied in scope; the histories of Hungary and Czechoslovakia begin roughly at the tenth century and extend into the 1930s, whereas the lectures on Poland and Bulgaria begin with the Great War and conclude with the late 1930s and early 1940s. Despite these differences, each of the lectures are concise and present the general history and character of the country and populations through generalizations and stereotypes.

The lectures on Hungary and Bulgaria conclude with a “points from questions” on the relationship between imperialism and the population of southeastern Europe. The lecture reads,

“The troubles of S.E. Europe largely due to rival imperialisms—Austria, Turkey, Russia. Churches strongly nationalist: this reduces capacity to co-operate. The people are over-excited, neurotic, and

458 Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy, 165. 459 “Course I: European Background 1 Europe 1919-1930.”

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defend themselves by deceit.”460 At once this offers some insight into the complicated power dynamic created by imperialism and nationalism, yet at the same time provides negative generalizations about the populations in southeast Europe in suggesting they are hostile, uncooperative and, when confronted, might lie. Similarly, the lecture “Italy and Her People” describes Italians as “not proud, obstinate or difficult to convince, but they are vain.” The lecture further emphasizes that volunteers should remember this when working with them because, “if they feel ignored, they will become a nuisance.”461 These can, very simply, be understood as warnings to relief workers aiding these populations after the war, yet they also impart a certain negative stereotype on a whole population.

As Hungary, Bulgarian, and Italy allied with Germany, one might anticipate the negative stereotypes presented to volunteers. The lecture on Germany, paradoxically, includes positive generalizations. A lecture on the national history of Germany notes, “Germans in the north, where they are energetic, resourceful and adventurous, and in the south, where they are sentimental, artistic and take life more easily.”462 What is less surprising in this instance are the distinctions the

FRS made between northern and southern Germans, but rather that both generalizations are seemingly positive attributes given to the German people as a whole in 1943. David Welch argues that initially a distinction was made between National Socialism and Adolf Hitler on the one hand and the ordinary population on the other; yet by 1940 as the British Ministry of Information took on the “Anger Campaign,” such distinctions were dropped. The “Anger Campaign” presented the brutality of Nazi Germany as an essential trait—Germans by nature were aggressive and violent,

460 “Course I: European Background 8 ‘Hungary and Bulgaria’” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 461 “Course I: European Background 14 Italy and Her People” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 462 “Course I: European Background 4 ‘Germany’” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library.12/6/19 9:02:00 AM

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and the Nazi regime was a manifestation of it.463 Rather than prescribing to this narrative by suggesting that all Germans are Nazis, let alone naturally violent and aggressive, the FRS lecture suggests the treatment of Germany by the Allies with the Treaty of Versailles and experience of economic crises in the post-1918 years fostered animosities and extremism among a particular segment of the German population.

The FRS differentiated between “Germans” and “Nazis.” A lecture covering the nature and rise Nazism and Fascism in Europe notes that the middle-aged Nazi elite were created out of “the deliberate training and brutalizing of sub-normal people” and will need to be separated from the

German population to be held accountable for their criminal activities when the war ends.464 The larger German population, in contrast, would need both material and spiritual relief. Furthermore, the efficiency of a relief scheme for the German population required a rejection of collective guilt among Germans lest the lessons of 1919 remain unacknowledged and the seeds for another war be planted. These sentiments to view the German population as not collectively guilty later challenged the non-fraternization order of the Allied military and newly created United Nations Relief and

Rehabilitation Administration, which stipulated the relief teams under their direction were not allowed to provide aid to any enemy population, especially the Germans.

Ultimately, the generalizations offered throughout the lectures create a paradox. The relief worker, trained under the direction of the FRS, was encouraged to at once feel a part of an international community and at the same time faced a reaffirmation of national and ethnic categorization, generalizations, and stereotypes. The hierarchies of ethnic and national groups were perpetuated by the FRS though the training program at Mount Waltham despite their mandate of impartial relief and insistence on instilling internationalism in members. Furthermore,

463 Welch, Persuading the People: British Propaganda in World War II, 89. 464 “Course I: Air-Raid Relief 1 The Fire Services.”

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generalizations presented throughout the lectures, made in reference to past experience and embedded in historic and contemporary causality, suggest a “truth” about certain populations that might influence the attitude and approach of relief workers once in the field. Studies in the field of social psychology argue that the creation or perpetuation of stereotypes do not necessarily lead to prejudiced or discriminatory actions.465 The presentation of either negative or positive stereotypes and generalizations may not lead a relief worker to directly discriminate against the population receiving aid; however, the relief worker or team informed by those stereotypes might indirectly initiate discriminatory attitudes or actions by cultivating an environment that encourages one or more receiving populations to conform their behaviors to those stereotypes. A second possibility is that those relief workers might cultivate an environment that promotes negative discord based on ethnic or national difference between two or more populations living and receiving aid in close proximity to each other.

Language Training

Perhaps one of the most essential components of training with the FAU and FRS was in

European languages; relief workers needed to have the facility to communicate with the populations receiving aid with regard to their health and welfare, their national origin and wishes regarding their future relocation, and to work alongside local voluntary organizations or authorities during and after the development of a relief scheme. When the FRS began training volunteers at

Mount Waltham, the organization insisted that incoming members have knowledge of at least one

465 Vance Locke and Lucy Johnston, “Stereotyping and Prejudice: A Social Cognitive Approach,” in Understanding Prejudice, Racism, and Social Conflict, ed. Martha Augoustinos and Katherine J. Reynolds (London: SAGE Publications, 2001); “Stereotypes and Prejudice: Their Automatic and Controlled Components,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 56, no. 1 (January 1989): 5–18, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.56.1.5; Michael Billig, “Prejudice, a Categorization and Particularization: From a Perceptual to a Rhetorical Approach,” European Journal of Social Psychology 15, no. 1 (March 1985): 79–103, https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2420150107.

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European language and that the camp provide courses to refine those skills as well as train volunteers in a second European language.466 Lilian Cadoux came into the FRS with knowledge of both French and German; she took advantage of evening classes as a way to brush up on the two languages as preparation for overseas relief work.467 She mentions the evening courses also provided some “stimulus” for her own mind in a moment of relief work that was both demanding and “deadening.”468 Likewise, the FAU incorporated language training into camps at Manor Farm,

Failand, in hospital sections and hostels in London, and by early 1944 an additional training center was opened at Selly Wood in Birmingham. By October 1944, the Twentieth Camp at Manor Farm offered languages as “a new experiment” taught by Douglas Scott. In October 1944, Ronald Harris wrote to the Friends Ambulance Chronicle that, “[W]ith the war drawing to a close and our most likely task the commencement of rehabilitation in Europe, it was felt possible to abandon instruction in defence against Gas and Fire for that in German.”469

The languages incorporated into the training programs at Mount Waltham and Manor Farm included French, German, some Italian and Modern Greek. The emphasis on western languages reflects less of concern for the demographic of refugee populations and more for the expected geographic location of succor. This reflects two characteristics of relief work by the organizations during and after the Great War, and the work conducted beginning in early 1940. First, the nature of relief provided during and after the Great War had been among populations not far removed from their home or nation of origin, relief workers who had knowledge of a language had typically been posted to that geographic area of need and those who did not have that particular language

466 Roger C. Wilson, “Notes on the Project for a Training Centre for Relief Work Abroad,” January 29, 1943, 1, FRS/1992/18, Friends House Library. 467 Cadoux, Lilian Violet. 468 Cadoux, Lilian Violet. 469 Roland Harris, “The Twentieth Training Camps,” Friends Ambulance Unit Chronicle (London: Friends Ambulance Unit, October 7, 1944), PERS B/F7/AMB/2, Swarthmore Peace Collection.

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learned as they worked, and teams often sought the help of a local for translation.470 Second, in the last half of 1943, both the FAU and FRS acknowledged reports from the continent that insisted there was great significance to speaking the language of the country where relief was being provided and where the population was nationally and ethnically homogeneous. The FAU and

FRS assumed that relief workers would be working among populations that either had knowledge of French or German, were of western European origin, or that volunteers would be working with local administrations and authorities rather than with refugees and DPs.

The insistence of the FRS that all volunteers have knowledge of at least one European language did not necessarily imply advanced language skills and furthermore, both the FRS and

FAU believed that even elementary skills could be helpful. One lecture in a series titled, “Informal

Talks,” reads, “The past experience of Friends has shown that it is possible for the average relief worker to do all that is necessary with a small number of basic words in any language. A list was used in the last war of about three hundred words.”471 In 1945, the Society of Friends published a fifty-page booklet, Relief Worker’s Vocabulary: French-English-German, to aid relief workers in the field. Organized under headlines, including “General Terms,” “Administration,” “Shopping,” and “Cooking” among others, the booklet could be used as a quick tool for the relief worker needed a specific word or phrase.472 Scholars Hilary Footitt and Simona Tobia argue that the list would not be effective on its own, but that some previous knowledge of the language would be helpful.473

470 “Course I: Refugees 6 The Administration of Refugee Camps (with Particular Reference to Spain and France 1937-40)”; Wilson, In the Margins of Chaos: Recollections of Relief Work in and Between Three Wars; Geoffrey Winthrop Young, “First Report of the Work of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit,” April 1915. 471 “Informal Talk: The Relief Worker and Practical Problems” (Friends’ Emergency Relief Training Centre, September 1943), 2, FRS/1992/90, Friends House Library. 472 Vernon Underwood, Douglas Scott, and Richard Ullmann, A Relief Worker’s Vocabulary: French-English- German (London: London Yearly Meeting (Society of Friends), Friends Relief Service, 1945). 473 Footitt and Tobia, WarTalk: Foreign Languages and the British War Effort in Europe, 1940-47, 145.

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In conjunction with Relief Worker’s Vocabulary, in February 1946, the Friends World

Committee for Consultation published the handbook, Friends in Europe: Handbook of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Europe, which included a list of translations in French and German. This list does not offer basic terminology needed for field work, but instead concentrates on Quaker vocabulary and the various Friends committees and organizations.474 To be sure, the translation list would be beneficial for both Quaker and non-Quaker relief workers when asked by a French- or German-speaking individual about Quakerism or the role of Quakers in relief work. As the work is published after what the FAU and FRS regarded as the “first stage” of relief work—that period between entering Europe alongside military bodies during the war and the immediate months following—the list reflects the needs of relief workers in Occupied Germany as they began to transition towards rehabilitation and reconciliation. However, to reach that stage, the FAU and

FRS would have needed to establish connections and relationships with the population receiving aid.

Superficial discussion can inform the giver of aid on the basic condition and needs of the receiver, particularly when conducting preliminary interviews in the immediate postwar period.

Yet, this level of communication, requiring only basic or elementary knowledge of the language spoken, does not necessarily establish a sense of trust between individuals. Advanced language skills, however, allows for communication and discussion on a personal level that in turn enables the giver and receiver the opportunity to develop trusting relationship.

The handbook, International Relief in Action, published in 1944 contrasts the assertion made by the FRS regarding basic language skills in a discussion on the work of various agencies in France, Poland, and Serbia between 1920 and 1922. The handbook stated:

474 Friends World Committee for Consultation, Friends in Europe: Handbook of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Europe, 138–46.

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It is not difficult to make people of another language understand a few things, but that is another problem than carrying on a philosophical discussion with them. We find it difficult to appreciate their situation and they find it difficult to understand our mission. Some think we are rich and can well afford to be here practically without pay. Others wonder why we do not go home if we are volunteer workers. Often we are asked if we hate the Germans and love the French. To explain all these things is not easy.475

This excerpt suggests that the perception of an uneven power dynamic and disconnect between a relief worker and an individual receiving aid can be exacerbated when language skills are limited, and communication is superficial. This can impede or completely diminish aid given during and after a crisis. A pamphlet published in 1942 by the National Planning Association in Washington,

D.C. titled, “Relief for Europe: The First Phase of Reconstruction,” emphasizes that relief workers should have knowledge of European languages, first for the sake of efficiency, but importantly for a “good impression.” The pamphlet reads, “There will be enough resentment against foreign bureaucrats anyway, and it is adding insult to injury to send over men who cannot even talk the language.”476 The relief worker who has intermediate to advanced language skills is more likely to build a trusting relationship though intimate conversation and richer engagement that enables more effective relief, in particular an understanding for rehabilitative relief.

The significance of effective communication between relief worker and displaced populations cannot be understated. Relief teams, however, also needed to communicate clearly and effectively with local authorities as they developed and implemented relief schemes. The FRS and FAU mandated democratic relief work; for relief to be efficient and effective, and to prevent

“pauperization,” the relief teams needed to work collaboratively with local populations and authorities. As previously discussed, the FAU and FWVRC often worked as liaisons between the populations receiving aid and local administrators and leaders, as well as collaboratively with local

475 Hertha Kraus, International Relief in Action: 1914-1943 (Scottdale, PA: The Herald Press, 1944), 62. 476 “Relief for Europe: The First Phase of Reconstruction,” 47.

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organizations. Again, although basic language skills in German and French could get key elements of the job done, the relief teams needed to establish transparency and trust in order to create strong and resilient networks for immediate emergency relief and long-term rehabilitation, and especially reconciliation.

Conclusions

More than any of the other lessons and lectures offered at Mount Waltham, those that focused on fostering reconciliation in postwar relief reflected the significance the FAU and FRS placed on the role of Quaker traditions, foundational beliefs, and experiences instead of contemporary experts, think tanks, scientific research and data that guided approaches to humanitarian aid. Based on the Quaker belief in the Inner Light, that all individuals are connected through the light of God within them, the fate of all men and women are intrinsically connected and intertwined, it would not be enough for the FAU and FRS to travel overseas in the postwar period and offer material or physical relief alone. Rather these organizations fundamentally believed their work also included the important task to encourage reconciliation and, particularly within the FRS, to aid in the rehabilitation of the spirit. For volunteers to successfully give relief along such lines, the training program at Mount Waltham included lecture series on Quaker life and thought with an emphasis on the development of Quaker Centers as sites of international collaboration, lectures on contemporary European history and on the populations in Europe, and courses in European languages—all designed to foster internationalism in the volunteers. The FRS believed it would not be easy for a volunteer to travel overseas and instantly gain the trust of those receiving aid, but instead that each individual within the team should both understand and

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empathize with the community they worked with and only through that could the relief given be efficient and successful.

In witnessing the destruction and violence of the First World War, coupled with the rise of ultranationalism in the interwar period, British intellectuals, economists, institutions and organizations, and elements within the government began a campaign to reconceptualize and promote internationalism, particularly liberal internationalism. Scholar Casper Sylvest identifies liberal internationalism expressed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as “an ideology focused on encouraging progress, sowing order and enacting justice in international affairs” with the three interlocking objectives; political progress would lead to order and justice; political order in international politics would foster both stability and absence of war as well as an orderly form of politics not unlike those conducted in domestic politics; and order would denote progress, to some extent justice, and the “development of a public morality in international politics, the purpose of which was to subject political conduct to considerations of morality, ameliorating the pursuit of power or interests.”477 The British Quakers echoed these sentiments and drew on their experience in relief efforts during and after the First World War to become increasingly more active in international affairs, policies, and politics.

The Quaker Centers established during the interwar period around the world provided the context and experience for participation among Quakers and non-Quakers in promoting internationalism. The Centers encouraged reconciliation through internationalism—dialogue and discussion, lectures, and courses—for local populations, Quaker as well as non-Quaker, to take part in. In Berlin and Vienna, a generation came of age in the Centers and as their needs and interests changed so did the Centers. Similarly, as the social and political climates changed in

477 Casper Sylvest, British Liberal Internationalism, 1880-1930: Making Progress? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 3.

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central Europe with the rise of Fascism, the Centers served as a central location for volunteers to engage in active relief among suffering and persecuted populations. The Quaker Centers, conceptualized during and established after the Great War, provided a rich example for the FRS to draw on when planning and preparing for the second and third stages of relief work. If, however, volunteers to the FRS hoped to build centers similar to those developed after the Great War or promote reconciliation through internationalism, the FRS believed they should be knowledgeable of the populations they hoped to aid.

The lecture series on contemporary European history offered an overview of significant political, social, and economic events, and insight into the populations the FRS believed would be in need of aid after the war. Given the training program at Mount Waltham had been only twelve- weeks, the series could not offer detailed analysis regarding the histories or populations; thus, the lectures include several generalizations and stereotypes. The generalizations used in the lectures can be understood for their ease and brevity, yet when those generalizations contain prejudiced views about a certain ethnic or national population risked the possibility of discriminatory action by relief workers or the creation of an atmosphere not conducive to impartial relief. The use of generalizations or stereotypes was not exclusive to the FRS, then or still today, yet what is significant here is that in reducing a whole population down to a single or set of ethnic, religious, or national identifiers underscores the extent to which transnationalism as well as internationalism can reinforce nationalism. The FRS aimed to build an organization whose postwar relief aim included the fostering of reconciliation through internationalism and the training camp at Mount

Waltham provided many of the skills and knowledge to accomplish that; however, the stereotypes existing within the lectures illustrate that the FRS remained an organization of their time. In fact,

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they demonstrate the paradox that the FRS sought to foster internationalism, they remained entrenched in the spatial ordering of the nation state and the prioritization of national categories.

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PART THREE: RELIEF AND REHABILITATION IN THE

BRITISH OCCUPATION ZONE

CHAPTER NINE: THE “FIRST STAGE”

As early as 1943, the FAU waited in anticipation for the opening of a second front into northwest Europe by the Allied military forces. News of such an event, according to Davies, had been a “never-failing topic of conversation” and to ensure members were ready on a moment’s notice. The FAU had relief teams standing-by at the Midland Assembly Depot in Birmingham.

While waiting for the opportunity to move into Europe, members continued training in areas of language, driving, and on topics including European history and culture. Then in June 1944, the

Allied invasion of France, “Operation Overlord,” signaled to the relief teams waiting in England that movement into Europe to provide aid was not far behind. In an agreement between the Civil

Affairs Branch of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) and the British and American Red Cross, the FAU would begin relief work in northwest Europe under the auspices of the British Red Cross and, upon the request from 21st Army Group, provide ambulance teams for mobile relief. The twenty-three men, manning two of three ambulances, travelled to Europe in

September 1944, and in February 1945 the FAU teams entered Germany.

Between February 11 and February 19, 1945, Clifford Barnard, attached to the FAU

Section 2 and British Civil Affairs 205 Detachment, travelled from Wanroij, Holland to Bedburg,

Germany to assist in refugee and DP transit centers directly behind the frontlines. In a letter home,

Barnard described the conditions in Bedburg: “We moved up from our last place through so much destruction and where we are now we are surrounded by hundreds of homeless, both displaced

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persons and German refugees. There are few usable buildings, no electricity and no uncontaminated water.” Only a few days later, the challenge of surveying the area to begin preparations for a transit camp were worsened by fighting near Bedburg. On February 25, Barnard followed-up with an account of the situation:

We arrived in this place, hardly a town more a settlement, a few hours after its capture, infantry were still ‘mopping up’. It is very heavily damaged, I imagine there must have been some house to house fighting, and a haze of dust and smell of cordite hanging in the air. […] As soon as it was light we tried to assess the situation with the heavier artillery firing over our heads into the German positions. In the cellars the mostly damaged houses and blocks of flats were hundreds of refugees, one or two with untreated wounds, many of whom had been there for four days, with only the food they had brought with them. Dead German and Canadian soldiers were still being buried. The plight of the refugees was terrible. […] David, Roger and myself were taking a look at a damaged building to see if it could be used as a temporary hospital when a plane dropped a bomb which fell, very fortunately, just outside the building. What was left of the windows came in and a bit more of the damaged roof was dislodged. We were knocked to the ground by the blast, but otherwise uninjured, although David had a slight cut on his nose, probably from a piece of flying glass.”478

For teams like Section 2, the immediacy of finding suitable buildings in an area destroyed and devastated by the war proved difficult and dangerous. Yet, such conditions were not exclusive to

Bedburg.

The territory that would become the British Occupied Zone in Germany— Schleswig-

Holstein, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, and the western section of Berlin— had been a target of Allied “strategic bombing” because of the proximity those areas located along the north and northwest coast had to Britain, as well as for the high concentration of iron, steel, and armament industries. In 1942, a total of 41,400 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs were dropped on Germany by the Allies, in 1943 that number grew to 206,00 tons, and in 1944 a

478 Barnard, Binding the Wounds of War: A Young Relief Worker’s Letters Home 1943-47, 56–57.

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total of 1,202,000 tons.479 When the Allies bombed the city of Hamburg on the night of July 27/28

1943, the weather conditions and method of bomb deployment resulted in firestorm and “a catastrophe unparalleled in the European air war”; between 37,000 and 42,600 people died that night, of the 1.7 million inhabitants over 700,000 left the city, and 253,000 dwellings out of

450,800 had been destroyed.480 The bombing of Hamburg in July 1943 serves as an extreme example of the devastation and destruction caused by air warfare; however, Hamburg was one of several cities in the northwest region of Germany that had been targeted. Scholars have determined that by the end of 1943, the damage to Germany’s infrastructure was estimated at fifty billion marks as approximately fifty per cent of “the built-up area of Germany’s major cities and towns” had been destroyed by Allied bombing.481 Stephan Glienke argues the intensification of air attacks on specific locations in north and northwest Germany reverberated throughout Germany; as northern Germans evacuated or fled to the countryside, they took their stories of the bombing with them, tensions erupted between “urban” and “rural” Germans, and the limited food and housing became stressed in reception areas. 482 As a result of the destruction of the landscape and infrastructure, as well as the movement of German populations, displaced persons, and POWs, the primary concern of the Allied military pushing into Germany in early 1945 became the control of epidemics and relief for starving and malnourished populations.

This chapter will examine the first stage of relief from February 1945, when the FAU first entered Germany, and conclude with “The Battle of Winter” in late 1945 and early 1946. During

479 Stephan Glienke, “The Allied Air War and German Society,” in Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe, 1940-1945, ed. Baldoli, Claudia, Andrew Knapp, and Richard Overy (New York and London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011), 185. 480 University of Exeter, The Bombing of Germany 1940-1945 Exhibition, accessed September 16, 2019, https://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/history/research/centres/warstateandsociety/projects/bombing/; Glienke, “The Allied Air War and German Society,” 185–204; Keith Lowe, Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, 1943 (New York: Scribner, 2007), 183–227. 481 University of Exeter, The Bombing of Germany 1940-1945 Exhibition. 482 Glienke, “The Allied Air War and German Society,” 184–205.

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this first phase of relief, the FAU teams provided assistance to their military detachments in twenty-four-hour transit camps, relief to prisoners of war interned at the Sandbostel concentration camp and transporting German civilians from Berlin during the relief scheme “Operation Stork.”

The FRS arrived in Germany following the liberation of Nazi concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen.

Their role in Bergen-Belsen centered on the first stage of relief as they provided medical and nursing care to survivors of the camp.

Twenty-Four-Hour Transit Camps

Between September 1944 and June 1945, when the 2nd British Army was disbanded and the Unit became less nomadic, the FAU assisted the British military in the creation and running of twenty-four-hour transit and refugee centers in Belgium, Holland, and Germany. The populations consisted of ex-prisoners of war, refugees, and displaced persons including forced laborers and concentration camp survivors. The FAU followed a system of “processing” in both transit and refugee centers: identification of nationality and registration of personal information, followed by a medical inspection that included inoculation and disinfestation, and the distribution of food and clothing.

Upon arrival to a transit center, all west-bound and east-bound populations were registered.

The process included providing the authorities with proof of nationality—the individual could be either a national of the United Nations, a national of a neutral country, or a national of enemy or ex-enemy country. This process aided in repatriation as well as in determining who could and could not receive allied aid according to the mandate of the UNRRA. The FAU registered every displaced individual coming into the transit camps established behind the frontlines, and the practice continued in “temporary camps” created at the end of the war in May 1945. After

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registration, the refugees, displaced persons, and prisoners of war were submitted to a medical examination.

Prior to entering the field, the FRS and FAU required all volunteers to have inoculations for typhus, tetanus, typhoid and paratyphoid, and smallpox. Having the inoculations ensured volunteers could access sites of infection without risk of contracting a disease themselves and begin treatment of the infected. Inoculations and training ensured FAU and FRS teams could “hit the ground running.” In this initial period of relief, the FAU assisted military and Red Cross doctors in medical inspections and disease prevention, rather than long-term treatment. In a letter home,

Clifford Barnard, Section 2, wrote, “I have been assigned to help the two doctors with medical inspections, we are looking mainly for scabies, impetigo, head lice and so on which are very common, but very fortunately no sign of typhus. The Red Cross doctor is a bit on the lazy side, I think, anyway he leaves a lot to me, which I don’t mind as I can do with the experience.”483 The

FAU and FRS were made aware of scabies, a parasitic infestation of the skin by mites, during their work and training in Britain. Dr. Gwendoline Knight, FAU, wrote a treatise titled “Lice, Bugs and

Scabies” and volunteers working in London rest centers and living in hostels were regularly on the lookout for infestation.484 Unlike typhus, scabies is transmitted through prolonged human-to- human contact, mortality is rare, and treatment consisted of either baths and ointment containing sulfur or Benzyl benzoate. As Barnard points out, although both scabies and impetigo were common, the primary concern among the military bodies and the FAU remained typhus.

Between 1944 and 1945, the reported cases of typhus in Germany increased from 2,467 to

18,000. 485 These numbers do not reflect the inadequate reporting facilities or the lack of

483 Barnard, Binding the Wounds of War: A Young Relief Worker’s Letters Home 1943-47, 52. 484 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 31. 485 J.C. Snyder, “Typhus Fever in the Second World War,” California Medicine 66, no. 1 (January 1947): 5.

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willingness among officials to disclose reported cases, particularly instances of outbreak in concentration camps prior to liberation, they do, however, underscore the seriousness of the epidemic. Members of the FAU had been trained to identify typhus based on symptoms during the invasion stage of disease, identification and treatment were not as practical as prevention in transit camps for two reasons. First, the incubation period of twelve days for typhus meant that an individual could be infected but not demonstrate symptoms. Second, an immediate antibiotic treatment for typhus did not exist. In his letter, Barnard suggests there was fortune in not finding typhus, which can be understood less as an indicator of absence of disease and more of a relief that nursing typhus patients was not necessary. Thus, prevention took precedent.

In contrast to the previous method of “Serbian Barrels” to delouse and prevent the spread of typhus, a DDT sprayer allowed Assembly Centers to “process” refugees and DPs quickly and efficiently. David Rudd, FAU Section 6, describes the process of delousing in DP and POW camps during the Allied advance in 1945:

We had a cylinder with a piston which we’d push up and down sleeves and trousers, with similar arrangements for the women. The army then produced air compressors and pneumatic lines which formed a sort of gun. So when you pressed the trigger, you could delouse a person in 15 seconds flat.486

The mechanized spray gun used to distribute DDT, developed by the Rockefeller Foundation

Health Commission and the United States Typhus Commission, was highly regarded by military bodies and relief organizations for its efficiency and speed in the disinfestation process.487 One article, written by Dr. J.C. Snyder and published in California Medicine in 1947, notes the placement of centers armed with DDT along the Rhine meant that despite the millions of persons

486 Smith, Pacifists in Action, 325. 487 “DDT and Silent Spring: Fifty Years After,” accessed January 28, 2019, https://jmvh.org/article/ddt-and-silent- spring-fifty-years-after/; Thomas Dunlap, DDT: Scientists, Citizens, and Public Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 61–62; Ben Shephard, After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945 (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), 76; Snyder, “Typhus Fever in the Second World War,” 7.

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needing to be processed, the campaign was successful.488 Members of the FAU recalled processing hundreds of individuals each day, and one report notes a transit center in Holland received and processed 5,000 refugees in a week.489 The effectiveness of DDT extended beyond two weeks, even up to six months, yet the allied military required all refugees and DPs to continue the spraying process after the end of the war as DP and refugee populations continued to move between camps, towns, and cities to ensure typhus did not present any immediate or long-term threat to rehabilitating populations.

After registration, medical inspections, and food and clothing distribution, the British

Army arranged transport for the groups willing to return to their own countries. The FAU and

British Army had little difficulty in repatriating west-bound DPs and workers, which contrasted with the east-bound populations who would have rather stayed in occupied Germany while others insisted on being registered as “American/Polish.”490 The transit and refugee centers would also contrast with the DP camps that developed later in that, although the FAU focused on the immediate tasks of registration, delousing, catering and management, the demographic of the people in transit centers had been “frightened and dispirited families” rather than newly liberated forced workers.491 Nevertheless, the FAU provided what services they could and moved behind the British Army as they pushed further into Germany.

488 Snyder, “Typhus Fever in the Second World War,” 7. 489 Hinton and Hinton, “Friends Ambulance Unit,” 9; “Friends Ambulance Unit: Fifth Annual Report,” 4; Smith, Pacifists in Action, 325. 490 F.S.V. Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government North-West Europe 1944-1946, History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Military Series (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1961), 349–50; Barnard, Binding the Wounds of War: A Young Relief Worker’s Letters Home 1943-47, 59. 491 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 431.

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Bergen-Belsen

The British Second Army liberated Bergen-Belsen, originally a Nazi POW camp and later expanded by the SS into a concentration camp, on April 15, 1945 and the camp became the first instance of emergency relief work in Germany by the FRS. The conditions found within the camp were catastrophic with approximately 40,000 inmates suffering from extreme malnutrition and diseases such as typhus, typhoid, and dysentery, and nearly 18,000 corpses scattered throughout the camp. In a letter home dated June 11, 1945, Elizabeth Clarkson, RT100, wrote on the conditions found within the camp:

It was an experience which it is impossible to summarize in a few words, but one for which I think we are all profoundly grateful. You will have heard enough about the Concentration Camps in the newspaper reports and I will spare you a repetition of the horrors, which though sometimes reported inaccurately in detail, cannot be exaggerated. Over-crowding (600 people to a hut which the British Army says should hold a 100 at the outside), real starvation, followed by authentic instances of cannibalism, typhus, acute intestinal diseases, hardly any water and no sanitation; it is hardly surprising that the British found over 10,000 unburied dead when they entered the Camp and then one adds to this catalogue of horror, the all too well authenticated brutality of the majority of the S.S., I at least am filled with admiration for the vitality of the survivors, who have not only survived, but have remained recognizable, charming, though sometimes cantankerous human beings.492

The Chief Doctor to the British Second Army, Brigadier Hugh Llewellyn Glyn Hughes, arrived in the camp on April 15 and quickly began assessment of the condition of the surviving population.

His plan comprised the administration of food and water, removal of corpses, and to establish a triage that included the movement of “fit” internees from the “horror camp” to the nearby Panzer

Training School. The plan was initially hampered by a failure of command and confusion with authority among the British military, a lack of manpower and resources, and shock among the

492 Elizabeth Dearden (Clarkson), “ET Clarkson Correspondence,” 1947 1945, 11/20/1, Imperial War Museum.

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military bodies. Only during the second week following liberation could the plan be implemented.493

The first phase of moving internees focused on washing and disinfesting individual internees in an improvised hospital that would come to be known as the “human laundry.” Medical officials at Bergen-Belsen utilized DDT in the disinfestation of internees. The British posted local

German doctors and nurses to this position, which initially caused problems as the individual

Germans secured for the job were unaware of the distress and extreme condition of the survivors and, significantly, the internees did not want to be touched by Germans.

Members of the FRS RS100 team, alongside six Red Cross teams and a group of Girl

Guides, took up positions in the transportation and evacuation of internees between camps, the running of a first aid post in Camp I, running of canteen kitchens, registration, hospital work, clothing distribution, nursing in wards, and on the improvement of water supplies and chlorination.494 The British Army established the rule that women would not be allowed into the

“Horror Camp” to provide aid. Joanne Reilly argues that despite the urgency of the situation and lack of personnel, traditional gender roles and paternalistic discourses were upheld during relief efforts in Bergen-Belsen. The British military posited that the conditions in the “Horror Camp” were too gruesome for women to witness and work within and that women would thus not be able to work efficiently or professionally in such conditions.495 This meant the job of transport that would have, in any other situation, been assigned to a female FRS member had to be taken on by

493 Shephard, After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945, 52–65; Ben Shephard, “The Medical Relief Effort at Belsen,” in Belsen 1945: New Historical Perspectives, ed. Suzanne Bardgett and David Cesarani (London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006); Belsen: The Liberation of a Concentration Camp (New York, NY: Routledge, 1998), 34–36; “Surviving Survial: Nursing Care at Bergen-Belsen 1945,” Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing 26, no. 3 (2009): 104. 494 Joyce Margaret Parkinson, “Miss JM Parkinson,” 1945, 93/27/1, Imperial War Museum. 495 Reilly, Belsen: The Liberation of a Concentration Camp, 43–45.

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Transport Officer, Hugh Jenkins.496 Jenkins transported triaged inmates to the nearby Panzer Tank

Training Camp, which had been designated as the site for cleaning and nursing.

In conjunction with transporting internees between the two camps, Jenkins also visited

Bergen, a small town located near the camp, to collect German civilians to assist in clearing the camp as well as the German doctors and nurses that worked in the barracks turned hospital. He also travelled to local farms to gather produce for the camp. Prior to the invasion of Germany, the

Allies determined foodstuff and fuel would be supplied by local German sources. The Allies believed that Germans should feed the forced laborers and DPs found in Germany before feeding themselves, which often fueled hostility between local farmers and relief workers tasked with requisitioning foodstuff. Jenkins, utilizing a suggestion made by a doctor working in Bergen-

Belsen, developed a system with local farmers in which the empty truck would be weighed then weighed once full of vegetables and produce. This allowed Jenkins to determine how much food was supplied, which would be recorded for reimbursement later.497 Practices such as this ensured the goal of feeding DPs and former concentration camp inmates could progress unhindered by animosities or hostilities stemming from the Allied policy.

In contrast to the twenty-four-hour transit and temporary refugee centers, the medical relief provided in liberated concentration camps included treatment of several diseases. Furthermore, teams aiding in the recovery of former concentration camp internees acted a part of a larger scheme, often as individuals assigned to different tasks throughout the camps. As a welfare officer with the

FRS RS100, Elizabeth Dearden first worked with children, but transferred to a hospital block where she oversaw twelve nurses in a block of 150 patients. Dearden knew that recovery from

496 Hugh Jenkins and Elizabeth Dearden, Video, November 27, 2003, Fortunoff Video Archive; Land Niedersachsen/Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen. 497 Jenkins and Dearden.

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infectious diseases meant patients could only be fed soup that was not too nutritious because of the risk of death. She later recalled, “You had to be very careful not to feed people too much because starving people clamor for food. You’d go around the wards and people would say,

‘Schwester, Schwester, ich habe hungar.’ And you know, it would probably kill them to give them too much.”498

Despite the care provided by Dearden, the nurses, and other relief workers posted to the hospital blocks, the conditions could not improve rapidly enough; Bergen-Belsen continued to have high death rates, which resulted in psychological distress among those in recovery.499 In an effort to “cheer” the patients in recovery on her block after a particularly difficult night in which several people had died, Dearden “picked shrubs” to put in the block. She recalled that the patients appreciated her effort as “nobody had done that for a very long time.”500 Joanne Reilly argues the

British personnel in the camp found it difficult to relate to the survivors as “‘normal’ human beings,” and that many of the volunteers, medical students, and staff lacked medical experience needed to understand the psychological problems of the internees.501 In time, however, the medical personnel realized that the psychological problems among the internees directly related to undernourishment.

Reilly found that as survivors began to regain their physical health, they also began to “‘regain their self-respect’” and “reassert their individual personalities.”502 This, she suggests, resulted in the ability of more medical staff and volunteers to relate to the survivors in ways they could not in the initial period of relief. Dearden experienced the transformation first-hand when, once German doctors and nurses arrived in the camp to work in the hospital block, Dearden moved into work in

498 Dearden, Elizabeth. 499 Shephard, After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945, 95; Reilly, Belsen: The Liberation of a Concentration Camp, 46; Dearden, Elizabeth. 500 Dearden, Elizabeth. 501 Reilly, Belsen: The Liberation of a Concentration Camp, 41. 502 Reilly, 42.

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the clothing store that became known as “Harrods.”503 Once inmates were determined to be of a certain “fitness,” they were allowed to visit the clothing store to receive articles of clothing commandeered from Germans in surrounding towns and districts, before moving on to Camp III where they were housed according to nationality.504 Of the experience distributing clothing to survivors, Dearden wrote to a friend that, “Many of them were fussy about their clothes, which was interesting from several points of view, but on the whole we took it as a sign of returning morale, for many of the internees would once have been very particular about their appearance.”505

After working for five weeks in Bergen-Belsen, the FRS100 moved to a new location and form of relief—DP camps in Brunswick providing relief and rehabilitation to 28,000 DPs of various nationalities. The work differed from the emergency relief provided in Bergen-Belsen and represented the first shift, for the first FRS team in Germany, into the “second” and “third” stages of relief. This will be discussed in depth in chapter ten.

Sandbostel

On April 29, 1945 the British Army entered the prisoner-of-war camp, Sandbostel, Stalag

XB. The prisoner-of-war camp, situated north of the Bremen-Hamburg autobahn, had been established by the German Wehrmacht in September 1939 and held approximately 30,000 prisoners in over 150 “dormitory huts.” When the British Army liberated the camp, the internee population numbered fifteen thousand prisoners of war and eight thousand political prisoners of various nationalities including German.506 The influx of POWs began in the first weeks of April

503 Shephard, After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945, 118; Reilly, Belsen: The Liberation of a Concentration Camp, 40; Jenkins and Dearden, interview; Dearden, Elizabeth. 504 Shephard, After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945, 40. 505 Elizabeth Dearden (Clarkson), “Letter to Dr. Burns from Elizabeth Clarkson,” June 1, 1945, 11/20/1, Imperial War Museum. 506 “Sandbostel Camp Memorial,” Gedenkstätte Lager Sandbostel, accessed March 15, 2018, https://www.stiftung- lager-sandbostel.de/more-languages/english/.

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most coming from the Neuengamme concentration camp. The camp itself had been divided into three sections: the first section comprised British, Canadian, and French POWs, and as far as the liberating bodies could tell the overall conditions reflected the terms of the International Red Cross

Conventions, though still horrible. The second camp consisted exclusively of Russian POWs and, without protection of the Conventions, the internees lived in worse conditions; and the third section housed civilian political prisoners, including Germans, where conditions were the most dreadful.

After his arrival to the camp, Clifford Barnard, FAU Section 2, wrote home to his parents and offered a brief description of the conditions:

I won’t describe the squalor except to say that the dead were in piles and hundreds in open pits. They had been virtually unfed for ten days. I tell you I would rather see a soldier who had been killed in battle than the living dead who crawled around that place. But I am sure you have read enough of these places in the newspapers, although it must be hard to believe. I can tell you that they exist. I have seen things I shall never forget.507

Barnard’s letter conjures images that remain associated with camp liberation – the “living dead” existing among hundreds, even thousands of decaying comrades – all of which reflect the brutality and disregard for human life fostered in Nazi concentration camps. Most interesting, however, is

Barnard’s suggestion that these images have become, at least for those on the home front, commonplace even if still difficult to understand or grasp.

Despite finding the camp in such abysmal conditions, actions to aid suffering populations began prior to liberation of the camp. The German Camp Commandant and his staff, the only remaining Germans, turned the camp administration over to a French Naval Medical Officer and

POW, Colonel Marcel Albert.508 Under the command of Colonel Albert, on April 20 a small staff

507 Clifford Barnard, Two Weeks in May 1945: Sandbostel Concentration Camp and the Friends Ambulance Unit (London: Quaker Home Service, 1999), 43. 508 Barnard, 22; “Das Stalag XB Sandbostel” (n.d.), accessed July 16, 2018; Henrike Illig, “Die Befreiung Des Kriegsgefangenen - Un KZ-Auffanglagers Sandbostel Und Der Umgang Der Britischen Befreier Mit Der Deutschen Bevölkerung,” in Swischenräume. Displaced Persons, Internierte Und Flüchtlinge in Ehemaligen Konzentrationslagern, Beiträge Zur Geschichte Der Nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung in Norddeutschland (Bremen: Ed. Temmen, 2010), 13.

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of internees initiated the cleaning and removal of typhus infected individuals. Though the daily mortality rate had been approximately 150, by April 30, the staff of twenty-five disinfested, bathed, and re-clothed 3,200 individuals.509 The British bodies that took over relief efforts in the camp included the 168 Light Field Ambulance, the 31 Field Hygiene Section, the 205 Military

Government Detachment of the 30 Corps and the FAU Section 2.

Those responsible for liberation and relief in Sandbostel emphasized similarities to Bergen-

Belsen and thus established similar relief procedures. A war diary from the 205 Military

Government Detachment described the conditions of the camp as, “one-third replica of Belsen.”510

According to a June 1945 FAU Report, “Gerald Gardiner, leader of the F.A.U. section, who inspected Belsen Camp as a representative of the B.R.C.S. Commissioner, describes the condition of the average inmate of Sandbostel as the same as at Belsen. The chief causes of their condition are again typhus and starvation.”511 That the FAU and British Army drew comparisons between the conditions at Sandbostel and Bergen-Belsen in reports to headquarters and the home front reveals the impact Bergen-Belsen had on the liberators and served as the standard for comparison, at least in the early days prior to and immediately after VE Day, of extreme Nazi policies and practices against enemy populations. The sights, experiences, and efforts by the British military, doctors, and voluntary relief organizations at Bergen-Belsen, significant as they are to the historical narrative, often overshadow those from smaller camps like Sandbostel.

Nevertheless, like the procedure established at Bergen-Belsen, the British Army and medical teams created a “human laundry” for POWs, followed by careful nursing and feeding of

509 “Mil Gov Second Army: Weekly Summary,” May 1945, 1.1.02 TNA P12, Gedenkstätte Lager Sandbostel. 510 205 Mil. Gov. Det. Rear HQ 30 Corps., “War Diary,” May 1, 1945, 1.1.02 TNA P12, Gedenkstätte Lager Sandbostel; Barnard, Two Weeks in May 1945: Sandbostel Concentration Camp and the Friends Ambulance Unit, 15. 511 “Friends Ambulance Unit Report” (London, June 1945), MISC 256/3 FAU 9/1-2, Imperial War Museum.

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the internees. The primary responsibilities of the 205 Military Government Detachment and the

FAU Section 2 included the provision of foodstuff, procurement of stores and equipment, and catering for internees. A report by the RAMC noted that the Medical Specialist tasked with creating a diet for the camp believed a practical diet needed to be both “simple” and “unambitious” in the initial period of relief.512 Martin Southwood received training in catering with the FAU while in

Britain, which provided him with the skills to supervise the feeding scheme at Sandbostel that included the FAU section, French POWs, and a team of local German women. 513 When

Southwood began the feeding program, he took over from a French Lieutenant who supplied internees with ersatz coffee and milk in the morning, watery soup as an afternoon meal, and bread with margarine when possible.

The Allied medical officers classified internees according to nutritional need; Group A as

“starved internees,” Group B on “normal hospital diet,” and Group C as those not in hospital. The

British found that, though starvation had been widespread, dehydration was a marked feature and became the primary concern. Transfusion, then, became the method of treatment for of internees suffering from an inability to take fluids by mouth due to either physical weakness or “apathy,” those experiencing diarrhea and dehydration, and in extreme cases where rapid response was essential to a saving life.514 Clifford Barnard, FAU, noted the diet administered to Group A included two liters of skimmed fresh milk or three ounces of dried skimmed milk, one ounce of sugar, ½ ounce of salt, and three compound vitamin tablets. Barnard writes, “In the hospital those suffering from extreme dehydration, those unable to take fluids by the mouth because of weakness

512 F.S. Fiddes, “Report on Sandbostel Political Prisoners Camp by Lieutenant Colonel F.S. Fiddes, Commanding No. 10 (British) Casualty Clearing Station, with Appendices by Specialists,” May 1945, 18, RAMC/1184/3-6:Box 261, Wellcome Library, https://wellcomelibrary.org/item/b19201539. 513 Barnard, Two Weeks in May 1945: Sandbostel Concentration Camp and the Friends Ambulance Unit, 35–38; Barnard, Binding the Wounds of War: A Young Relief Worker’s Letters Home 1943-47, 69–70. 514 Fiddes, “Report on Sandbostel Political Prisoners Camp by Lieutenant Colonel F.S. Fiddes, Commanding No. 10 (British) Casualty Clearing Station, with Appendices by Specialists,” 80.

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or apathy and typhus cases who were comatose were transfused. Plasma and 5 per cent glucose were given intravenously: 367 patients were treated in this way.”515

The diet for Groups B and C, whose health was comparatively better than Group A, permitted higher caloric intake and consumption of a wider variety of foodstuff. The prescribed diet consisted of dried milk, sugar and salt, “Compound Vitamin tablets,” bread, potatoes, concentrated soup, tinned meat, and tinned vegetables or ½ ounce of dehydrated vegetables.516

The primary difference between the two diets was the amount of certain foods; those in Group B received more milk, vitamins, and some margarine or butter, whereas those in Group C had more bread, potatoes, meat, and vegetables. The food distributed in Sandbostel came primarily from three sources: a supply of Red Cross food parcels designated for British POWs; from German stocks brought in from nearby towns and farms; and from a nearby British Army Detailed Issue

Depot (DID).

Beginning in 1940, the Joint War Organization, with assistance from the International

Committee of the Red Cross, packaged and sent over twenty million food parcels to concentration camps over the course of the war.517 A “Summary of Work” by the BRCS, of the Joint War

Organization, indicated that in December 1944 139,078 food parcels to British POWs had been delivered to European camps and in the first two weeks of February 1945, 180,922.518 The Red

Cross food parcels uncovered at Sandbostel numbered around 3,500, which included tinned food

515 Barnard, Two Weeks in May 1945: Sandbostel Concentration Camp and the Friends Ambulance Unit, 38; Fiddes, “Report on Sandbostel Political Prisoners Camp by Lieutenant Colonel F.S. Fiddes, Commanding No. 10 (British) Casualty Clearing Station, with Appendices by Specialists,” 61. 516 Barnard, Two Weeks in May 1945: Sandbostel Concentration Camp and the Friends Ambulance Unit, 37; Fiddes, “Report on Sandbostel Political Prisoners Camp by Lieutenant Colonel F.S. Fiddes, Commanding No. 10 (British) Casualty Clearing Station, with Appendices by Specialists,” 63. 517 “Caring on the Home Front: Joint War Organisation Parcels,” British Red Cross, accessed March 23, 2019, http://www.caringonthehomefront.org.uk/search-the-library/jwo-parcels/. 518 British Red Cross Society, Order of St. John of Jerusalem in England, “Summary of Work,” May 26, 1945, International Committee of the Red Cross.

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and powdered milk, chocolate bars, and cigarettes. 519 Members of the FAU helped in the unpacking and separation of goods and foodstuff in the parcels before being utilized in kitchens for soup preparation and distribution.520

Although the FRS and FAU training programs touched on the possibility of extreme behavior in starving populations, once in the field the teams witnessed first-hand the impact of acute starvation on the psychological health of an individual, and the difficulties of feeding the population. In reports by the RAMC and FAU Section 2, the internees of Sandbostel are often described as “animals,” “animal-like,” or living in an “animal state” because of personal experiences of suffering and conditions created, whether directly by Nazi camp guards or indirectly by orders of transport and overcrowding, within the camp: “They had lost the normal instincts of personal cleanliness, and did not attempt to wait for a bedpan, but fouled the bed. This may have been in some degree due to illness but was very largely due to a loss of normal instincts.”521 When distributing food during the day, internees “scrambled” for their share of food, and in some cases took food from comrades. Major R. Hammond of the RAMC noted, “A dramatic, but true, example of this unscrupulousness is that of a man whose neighbour in bed was so ill that he was receiving a transfusion of saline. Being thirsty, the first man merely took the bottle from his comrade’s apparatus and drank the contents, though he must have known that he was endangering that comrade’s life.”522 These observations, however, did not reflect an imparting of

519 John Worsley, The Contents of a Red Cross Parcel, 1944, 1944, Imperial War Museum, https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/38779. 520 Barnard, Two Weeks in May 1945: Sandbostel Concentration Camp and the Friends Ambulance Unit, 40; Barnard, Binding the Wounds of War: A Young Relief Worker’s Letters Home 1943-47, 71. 521 Fiddes, “Report on Sandbostel Political Prisoners Camp by Lieutenant Colonel F.S. Fiddes, Commanding No. 10 (British) Casualty Clearing Station, with Appendices by Specialists,” 111, 118. 522 Fiddes, 118.

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blame or guilt; the groups assisting in Sandbostel reasoned the actions of individuals resulted from the treatment they received and the conditions under which they had been forced to live.523

The FAU Section 2 assisted in Sandbostel for a total of sixteen days. The team divided into two sections with one section continuing to oversee the convalescence of Sandbostel internees at a convalescent home called Farge, near Bremen, and the other moving to assist DP populations in

Assembly Centers. Per the FAU mandate and training, the team at Farge assisted in establishing a home that would eventually become self-sufficient. Once teams moved on from assisting in camps like Bergen-Belsen and Sandbostel, and additional FAU and FRS teams arrived in the British

Occupation Zone in Germany, the teams worked in relief programs in their designated districts on a more permanent basis focusing on either DP populations or transitioning into work among

German populations in need.

“Operation Stork”

During the summer of 1945 Berlin had become a “collecting point” for DPs from the

Russian Zone moving west and German expellees, Volksdeutsche, from Poland and

Czechoslovakia seeking refuge in Germany. Recent scholarship sheds light on the expulsions of

Volksdeutsche out of eastern states to Germany noting that despite recognition and planning by

Allied governments between 1943 and 1945—in particular agreements reached in Potsdam in

August 1945 that established a policy of humane treatment of German expellees—the reality in the spring and summer of 1945 had been devastatingly unsystematic and overwhelming. 524

523 Barnard, Binding the Wounds of War: A Young Relief Worker’s Letters Home 1943-47, 68–71; Barnard, Two Weeks in May 1945: Sandbostel Concentration Camp and the Friends Ambulance Unit, 33–49; Fiddes, “Report on Sandbostel Political Prisoners Camp by Lieutenant Colonel F.S. Fiddes, Commanding No. 10 (British) Casualty Clearing Station, with Appendices by Specialists.” 524 R.M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012); Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951; Gatrell, The

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Contemporaries named the movement the “Wild Expulsions” to reflect what was believed to be local community mob action to expel German populations; however, historians agree that violent action in removal had been executed by troops and police directed by high office authorities and underscored a resurgence of both nationalism and social cleansing, particularly in Poland and

Czechoslovakia.525 Matthew Frank points out that the British personnel in Berlin during the month of August 1945 were ill-equipped and ill-prepared to confront the problem of an estimated 17,000

“pestilent and starving displaced Germans” arriving daily and that those on-the-ground issued warnings that unless a political and practical solution could be found to the influx of refugees and

German expellees, the occupying powers “would soon face a humanitarian catastrophe with public health implications which reached far beyond the city and even occupied Germany itself.”526 The

Allied policy that Germans should care for Germans could not be realized in the summer and autumn of 1945 as German voluntary and welfare organizations had not been rehabilitated and until August, the non-fraternization order prohibited Allied relief organizations from working with the German population. The UNRRA had a clear mandate that only Allied nationals would receive aid. The problem of distressed and suffering Germans, however, needed to be addressed.

Through an agreement established with the British Military Government, Gerald Gardiner sent FAU Section 135 into Berlin to assist with investigations and reports on the conditions among the expellees and local German population. Team members of Section 135 took on various tasks in their effort to determine the immediate needs and potential crises facing Berlin, that could be extrapolated to German populations throughout the British Occupied Zone. Deryck Rolfe Moore,

Making of the Modern Refugee, 92; Frank, “Working for the Germans: British Voluntary Societies and the German Refugee Crisis, 1945-50”; Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, 120–23. 525 Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War, 94–129; Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, 122–23. 526 Frank, “Working for the Germans: British Voluntary Societies and the German Refugee Crisis, 1945-50,” 159.

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Transport Officer for the FAU, arrived at the Red Cross Headquarters in Vlotho, Germany in June

1945. While at Vlotho, Moore’s duties included the assessment of vehicle needs for the section teams, assess army supplies, and run both army vehicles and supplies throughout the British

Occupied Zone. 527 Following the agreement between the FAU and the British Military

Government, Moore’s first major task as Transport Officer was to travel to Berlin with Section

135 to assess the status of transport needs as the team members assess the conditions of the city.528

Arthur Hinton and his wife Hedy, both of Section 135, assisted in investigations into the availability of medical and food supplies and the ways in which individuals supplemented rations, as well as interviewed refugees from the east to determine weight loss and malnutrition. An FAU

Weekly Information report summarized the findings of the Section 135:

All recent reports from Germany give a very depressing picture of conditions at the moment, when thousands of ill-clad and starving refugees are pouring westwards, trying to return to their former homes, or to find some place where they can resettle, having been evicted from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Families have been split up on the way, and there is no possible machinery which can be used to trace missing father or children who have simply dropped out en route. […] ‘Only immediate and planned action by the Allies can avert a tragedy on the greatest scale which will poison international relations for many years to come.’529

Hinton emphasizes that once the reports made their way to Britain, the British government faced a realization that, “though former enemies, these people could not be left to their fate, to die of starvation and neglect.”530

Although the policy of the Allied governments had been to feed populations in Germany from local German stores, the ever-increasing number of DPs and refugees would put a strain on those resources. Just as they had done in the past, individual philanthropic organizations in Britain

527 Moore, Deryck Rolfe. 528 Hinton and Hinton, “Friends Ambulance Unit,” 16; Moore, Deryck Rolfe. 529 “Weekly Information” (London, September 12, 1945), MISC 256/3 FAU 9/1-2, Imperial War Museum. 530 Hinton and Hinton, “Friends Ambulance Unit,” 17.

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and the United States collected and sent foodstuff and relief supplies to Germany that could be distributed from a central location in the British Occupation Zone. In the spring of 1945, the BRCS joined the FAU headquarters at Vlotho in Weser, Germany. The headquarters served not only as a base of operations for civilian relief teams in the British Occupation Zone but also pooled and stored supplies or goods, which then could be distributed on a needs-basis to relief teams working across the Zone.531 The aim of Quaker food relief and the schemes developed during the spring and summer of 1945 centered on hindering the spread of infectious diseases exacerbated by malnourishment, as well as to address the challenge of physical recovery in order to ensure the next step of mental and spiritual rehabilitation would not be hampered.

In this context, the British Military Government under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery initiated “The Battle of the Winter” in late summer and early autumn of 1945. Christopher Knowles argues Montgomery approached the situation in Germany as a military operation, one that would

“win the peace” and the operations – Operation Barleycorn, Operation Coalscuttle, and Operation

Stork – would “provide ‘food, work, and homes.’”532 Set to begin in October, “Operation Stork” focused on the evacuation of pregnant mothers and children from the city of Berlin to Helmstedt,

Germany in the British Occupation Zone. As a part of the operation, the FAU provided assistance by posting two ambulances at the head and tail of each convoy with each truck manned by two members.533 Ralph Arnold, Section 135, suggested the operation mirrored the British evacuation scheme “Operation Pied Piper” in 1939.534

531 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 433; Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 223. 532 Christopher Knowles, Winning the Peace: The British in Occupied Germany, 1945-1948 (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 19. 533 Arnold, Ralph Hodby; Smith, Pacifists in Action, 337; “Weekly Information” (London, October 24, 1945), MISC 256/3 FAU 9/1-2, Imperial War Museum. 534 Arnold, Ralph Hodby.

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Following the Munich Crisis in 1938, the LCC developed an evacuation scheme for civilians from major cities and towns believed to be potential targets of German aerial bombing to the countryside. Within the first three days of September 1939, an estimated 500,000 schoolchildren, accompanied by teachers evacuated to the countryside. Despite massive planning by the British government and voluntary organizations, the evacuation occurred during a period known as “the Phony War” and many families and children returned home just as the Battle of

Britain began. Scholars have recently posited that, despite the return of families and children to the cities, the evacuation plan represented an acknowledgement within the government that a planned and organized evacuation would avoid the chaos from a mass exodus or “panic flight” by civilians.535

Just as in Operation Pied Piper, local German teachers and social workers accompanied pregnant women and mothers with children between the ages of four and fourteen. John Adamson,

Section 135, recalled, “It was a difficult decision for parents, usually just the mother, to agree to hand over their children who had survived the war, even though some teachers travelled with them.”536 Prior to departure, relief teams conducted a medical assessment, cleaned and clothed children.537 Once the convoy began, Deryck Moore found that many of the children were chatty, excited, and found riding in the truck to be “fun.”538 The convoy also proved exciting for several of the FAU volunteers when a team member, Harold Ridgly, aided in the birth of a baby. John

Adamson later recalled that, as an account of the event, “someone drew a cartoon of the ambulances speeding along and a stork with a baby trying to catch up with it.”539

535 Gartner, Operation Pied Piper: The Wartime Evacuation of Schoolchildren from London and Berlin, 1938-1946; Mackay, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War, 32. 536 Smith, Pacifists in Action, 337. 537 From Our Special Correspondent, “Children in British Zone of Berlin,” The Times, October 27, 1945, The Times Digital Archive; Moore, Deryck Rolfe. 538 Moore, Deryck Rolfe. 539 Smith, Pacifists in Action, 337; Arnold, Ralph Hodby.

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Operation Stork ran from October to mid-November with fifty buses traveling 120 miles from Berlin through the Russian Zone to Helmstedt, Germany and in total 25,000 children and

5,000 adults evacuated to the German countryside where they were housed in private billets.540

Adamson noted that in the spring of 1946, both children and mothers returned to Berlin: “By that time we were working with a Red Cross Child Welfare team. They reported that they could easily distinguish the Aktion Storch children from those who had spent the winter in Berlin[.]”541 Those

FAU members that assisted with Operation Stork understood responses like that as evidence of a successful relief program. Matthew Frank argues this relief program, along with the initial report created by the FAU upon arrival in Berlin, represents the first period of emergency relief that extends from August 1945 through January 1946 and is significant because it occurred before restrictions on working with Germans was lifted. Furthermore, Frank points out that Operation

Stork “was the earliest example of German relief work undertaken by the British authorities” and the publicity the evacuation received in Britain echoed the sentiment of benevolent occupier by

“seeing Germany through the winter.”542

Conclusions

Scholars have argued that no amount of training or preparation could have prepared the military or voluntary relief organizations for the amount of destruction, death, and displacement they met in the final months of the war.543 When FAU and FRS teams arrived in Germany, first

540 “Weekly Information,” October 24, 1945; From Our Special Correspondent, “Children in British Zone of Berlin”; Frank, “Working for the Germans: British Voluntary Societies and the German Refugee Crisis, 1945-50,” 162; Matthew Frank, Expelling the Germans: British Opinion and Post-1945 Population Transfer in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 541 Smith, Pacifists in Action, 337. 542 Frank, “Working for the Germans: British Voluntary Societies and the German Refugee Crisis, 1945-50,” 162; Frank, Expelling the Germans: British Opinion and Post-1945 Population Transfer in Context. 543 Hagit Lavsky, New Beginnings: Holocaust Survivors in Bergen-Belsen and the British Zone, 1945-1950 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002); Shephard, After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945; Frank,

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with the FAU in February 1945 and then with the FRS in April of that year, they came only with the skills and knowledge gained from experience and training in Britain; the teams worked as part of a larger effort in the emergency relief and often had to adapt to unforeseen crises.

The FAU first assisted in the establishment of transit and refugee centers, worked alongside doctors in the identification of disease, and in preventative measures such as spraying DDT. The

FAU, as well as FRS, trained volunteers to identify, treat, and prevent infectious diseases exacerbated by wartime conditions and mass population movement; however, immediacy of disease prevention in the field and scale of population movement required relief teams to prioritize prevention of diseases such as typhus rather than address or provide treatment to infected populations. Team members had been trained to use Serbian Barrels in the prevention of typhus, but once in the field had to modify and adapt to the newer technology and approach afforded by

DDT sprayers.

Working alongside military doctors and personnel as well as with other relief organizations required the FAU and FRS teams split into various groups, oversee aspects of emergency medical and feeding services, and engage with local populations in order to ensure the larger relief scheme could proceed efficiently. Their knowledge of treatment of infectious diseases and malnutrition did, however, played a significant role in their work in liberated concentration camps; the conditions in Bergen-Belsen required the FRS to take on roles such as nursing individuals who became infected with not one but multiple highly infectious and extremely deadly diseases, and the starvation and malnutrition experienced in Sandbostel required the FAU to aid in the development and implementation of feeding scheme among former prisoners of war.

Expelling the Germans: British Opinion and Post-1945 Population Transfer in Context; Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War; Francis Graham-Dixon, The Allied Occupation of Germany: The Refugee Crisis, Denazification and the Path to Reconstruction (New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2013).

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With that, when the FAU and FRS teams arrived in Bergen-Belsen and Sandbostel, the role of ambulance and transport vehicles proved essential in moving concentration camp survivors to prepared locations for medical and nursing care. The FRS RS100 in Bergen-Belsen, transported local foodstuff and supplies into the camps as well as conveyed local German doctors and nurses to the camps to assist with medical relief services. Although the Allied policy of non-fraternization restricted contact and collaboration between voluntary organizations with local German populations, the FAU and FRS defied the Allied policy and established working relationships with local populations in order to supply essential resources needed for emergency relief. This practice extended beyond liberated concentration camps as the refugee situation became dire in the summer and fall of 1945.

The first relief scheme that targeted German refugees took place in Berlin with Operation

Stork. The relief scheme was a response not only to the deteriorating urban conditions and threat of winter, but also the surge of ethnic Germans expelled from or fleeing from eastern territories.

The FAU reported on the conditions and with available teams in Berlin and with available teams in the city, aided in the transport scheme. Furthermore, the team suggested it had proven successful as the women and children fared better in the countryside with more access to food than those who stayed in the city. The interdependent relationship between food, fuel, and transport characterized relief efforts during immediate postwar years, often creating challenges for the teams. Without working vehicles to provide transport of foodstuff and supplies, the teams faced increased crime rates and difficulties in implementing day-to-day relief programs. Ultimately, the FAU and FRS teams posted throughout the British Occupied Zone had to respond and adapt to unexpected postwar unexpected conditions and limited resources. Well-trained in driving and mechanics as well as in refugee camp organization, the FAU and FRS discovered unimaginable conditions and

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populations in distress in the British zone. To meet those challenges, the FAU and FRS relief teams drew both the skills learned in their training camps, the core principles of impartiality and self- help, and exhibited adaptability to extreme crises.

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CHAPTER TEN: “STAGES TWO AND THREE” AMONG DISPLACED PERSONS

In a 1943 paper on relief and reconstruction written for the Fabian Society titled, “The Re- establishment of Displaced Peoples,” Kenneth Brooks posits:

The biggest human problem with which we shall be faced in re-ordering the world after the end of the war will probably be that of re-establishing the peoples who have been displaced from their homes and localities for one reason or another. The magnitude of the problem is such as to cause the heart to sink and beside it the re-organization of the world’s economic life may well seem a simple matter.544

Brooks suggested that without rehabilitation of the mind, body, and spirit of displaced and refugee populations in post-war Europe, economic and political reconstruction could not happen. Although

“rehabilitation” had been a concern among various bodies—including the UNRRA, the Allied governments, and various think tanks—few regarded the term as anything other than dealing with economic and political reconstruction. The FAU and, especially the FRS, shared in Brooks’ understanding that any long-term goals could come to fruition without first addressing the suffering and distress caused by war.

The overlap in stages one and two signaled to the FAU that although their presence in the

British Occupation Zone was needed, the relief teams were not necessarily equipped for the transition into stages two and three. This was evidenced by two significant developments. First, in

June 1945, the FAU brought female members to Germany to help with welfare work and develop occupational programs for DP populations. A. Telga Davies characterized the work needed in DP camps as “communal activities—gardening, sewing, dramatics, schooling for children, scouting, to mention a few.”545 He notes that the female members entering the field took up the work with enthusiasm, whereas many of the other male members expressed a lack of interest and asked

544 Brooks, “The Re-Establishment of Displaced Peoples,” 99. 545 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 434.

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whether or not they should stay on and continue work.546 During the summer of 1945, the FAU held staff meetings in London to determine the course of action, and the Unit decided that the number of relief workers in Germany should not be reduced since the UNRRRA did not have an adequate number of relief workers to replace the Unit with and all avenues of “emergency needs” had not been fully explored, particularly among the German population. By August, Gerald

Gardiner visited Berlin with the intention of investigating and reporting on the conditions of

Germans and expellees. This will be discussed further in chapter eleven, however, it is important to note that during this phase of relief, the FRS took the lead in aiding DP populations across the

British Occupation Zone. This will examine the role the FAU and FRS in “stages two and three” as they provided relief as well as rehabilitation to DPs in camps, villages, and towns throughout the British Occupation Zone.

The “Displaced Person” in the British Occupation Zone

In January 1944, the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), under the command of United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower, developed legal classifications of displaced populations in anticipation of a postwar crisis. In the process of developing categories, the term “Displaced Persons” was coined to differentiate between those who for a variety of reasons were displaced outside of their country and populations displaced within their own country,

“refugees.”547 Like the FRS, the military planners developed a set of categories based on cause of movement and nationality, but also emphasized the location of a population at the time of displacement and relied less on the notion of a nationality as suggestive of a “protecting power”

546 Davies, 434. 547 Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government North-West Europe 1944-1946, 341; Jayne Persian, “Displaced Persons and the Politics of International Categorisation(s),” Australian Journal of Politics and History 58, no. 4 (n.d.): 482–83; Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951, 25.

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and more on the relation of the population to the Allied United Nations during the war. Within the categories, military planners differentiated between Allied “friend” and “enemy.”548 The Allied powers agreed that responsibility for friendly DPs and refugees would be the responsibility of

Allied military authorities, which would transfer to the newly created UNRRA at the earliest possible moment.

The control and care of “enemy” displaced persons and refugees would fall on the Germans.

This policy of discrimination was later supported by a non-fraternization order issued by the

Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force in September 1944, which prohibited friendliness between Allied troops and German populations. In theory, these policies served as a

“small instalment of restitution.”549 In reality and practice, the policies could not be uniformly practiced; voluntary relief organizations like the FAU and FRS mandated impartial aid to all suffering populations, and the level of destruction found in Germany hindered relief schemes for

“friendly” populations. The vast destruction and nature of the war also increased the fear among military authorities of a German population either turning to violence and upheaval or political extremism if left in desperate conditions. The relief and rehabilitation of German populations will be discussed fully in chapter eleven.

Early Repatriation and the “Non-repatriable”

Allied military planners and governments believed the best solution to the “refugee problem” facing Europe at the end of the war would be a policy of repatriation. Bruno Cabanes argues the inclination toward repatriation grew out of the intellectual frameworks developed by

548 Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government North-West Europe 1944-1946, 341–42; Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, 4–5. 549 Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government North-West Europe 1944-1946, 342.

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diplomats during and after the Great War. Despite a rise in internationalist ideals among legal scholars and found in the foundation of the League of Nations, Cabanes shows that most diplomats and politicians continued to espouse and support national allegiances. He writes, “The idea was that a man was most comfortable among his own people, on his own territory, and that his return should be facilitated by all available means.”550 This was further supported by the financial benefit of repatriation; the Great War depleted European economies, therefore the funds saved and manpower afforded by returning citizens to their home country was much needed. The FRS, however, stressed that a policy of repatriation in the postwar period would not be without significant challenges. Margaret McNeill later wrote that, “At the end of the war, the general idea had been that everyone who was not a German was a displaced person, and that once they were tidied up into their respective nationalities, they would all be sent back to their own countries.”551

On paper, this appeared straight-forward, yet in reality it was not that simple.

The geopolitical transformations of postwar Europe determined by the Allied governments during the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences in February and July 1945, respectively, complicated the implementation of repatriation. Underscoring the Yalta Conference in February 1945 was the continuation of the war in the Pacific theatre. To secure participation of the Soviets in the war against Japan, the Allies agreed that Germany would be held accountable for reparations at the end of the war, that eastern European nations would be friendly to the Soviet regime and on the inclusion of communists in a Polish national government, and finally that all liberated Soviet citizens be returned to the Soviet Union. The Yalta Conference laid out the aims of the eastern and western Allied governments and set a precedent for Soviet influence in the east whereas the

550 Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924, 162. 551 Margaret McNeill, By the Rivers of Babylon: A Story of Relief Work Among the Displaced Persons of Europe (London: Bannisdale Press, 1950), 66.

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negotiations in July 1945 at the Potsdam Conference were formal agreements determining the borders in postwar central Europe.

A significant component to Potsdam Conference formally established postwar agreements on the physical boundaries of Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Since initial discussions at

Yalta, the stance of the Soviet Union had been to secure territories to serve as a buffer between

Germans and Soviets—the Soviet Union would gain territories annexed in September 1939 and in exchange for the loss of territory, Poland would gain land west to the Oder-Neisse Line. This readjustment of national boarders meant that DPs who were once Polish were now considered

Soviet. To complicate matters further, the Soviet Union also claimed Estonians, Latvians,

Lithuanians, and Ukrainians as Soviet citizens. Thus, when voluntary relief organizations set to work in DP camps, not only did registration of east-bound DPs become increasingly more difficult but so did the development of repatriation schemes for entire populations of people who outright resisted their imposed state identity as Soviet and refused to return to a nation they did not identify with.

Viewing Polish DPs as troublesome and violent, the Military Government wanted to begin repatriation as soon as possible; yet, early transport including railway and roads had been relegated to the Soviets and Poland would not accept more than 3,000 to 4,000 DPs a day. Negotiations between the British Military Government and the Polish government regarding the repatriation of

500,000 Polish men, women and children began in August 1945. The Times reported in August

1945 that prior to the beginning of early repatriation program notices were posted to hundreds of

Polish DP camps focused on the question of willingness of an individual to repatriate based on their knowledge of the conditions in Poland.552 The article states that the question refers to the new

552 From Our Special Correspondent, “Polish Citizens In Germany,” The Times, August 25, 1945, The Times Digital Archive.

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eastern boundaries of Poland established during the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, and that those hesitant to return to Poland would have alternative options or could revisit the option of repatriation at a later date, likely after the winter.

The first Polish repatriation schemes began in October 1945, one of which the FAU assisted with, called “Operation Eagle.” Basil Smith, leader of FAU Section 6, provided British trucks to transport Polish DPs daily from the British Zone to the Russian Zone—from Lüneberg to Stettin— where Polish authorities took charge. The Section also oversaw the cleaning of a brewery in Dessau, chosen as a transit camp for having established kitchens, medical inspection room, latrines, and water supply. With instruction to “not annoy the Russians,” the first transport, consisting of one thousand Polish DPs, proved successful and over the course of October the numbers rose to three thousand daily, and by October 24 approximately 27,500 passed through the camp.553 Once routine developed in the camp, the Section began the incorporation of Polish DPs into the administration and eventually control over much of the operation. Despite the transferring of responsibility, the

British Army wanted the Section to stay in Dessau to oversee operations. While some members stayed for three months and others for five, they had been, “camp-bound by a rigid Russian cordon, and much depressed by the triangle of hatred between Germans, Russians and Poles.”554

For those who did not return in the autumn of 1945, relief workers urged them to stay in the camps until the next spring to avoid the rigorous and dangerous travel that winter would bring.

Yet, by the spring of 1946 early reluctance turned to resistance when, after Polish elections, communist control of the government emerged. Poland became immersed in a struggle— democratic political parties were attacked and murdered, increased food shortages and labor

553 “Weekly Information” (London, November 7, 1945), MISC 256/3 FAU 9/1-2, Imperial War Museum; Smith, Pacifists in Action, 326. 554 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 436.

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strikes—did not tempt Polish DPs to leave Germany even as apprehensive as they were about staying.555 Anna Holian argues the “Repatriation Debate” that emerged among Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian DPs centered on a combination of political opposition to communism, the highly destructive wartime occupation of the Soviet Union, and for the Ukrainians both Polish and the

Soviet occupation. For the Polish DPs, Holian posits that their decision to repatriate or not relied on both political and economic conditions in Poland, news of which had made its way back to DPs in the west.556 After the first repatriation of Polish DPs from Goslar, McNeill noted an observation of a team member:

If you ask me […] we’ve missed the psychological moment as far as the Poles are concerned. People who suffered during the war years as they suffered should all have been sent back in a triumphant body, prisoners-of-war and D.P.s all together, and welcomed in Poland with bands playing and flags flying. If they’d done that I don’t believe a single Pole would have stayed away. But nothing could be more depressing than this way of going back; the people are all so suspicious and unnerved, their indecision will spread and have a fearfully demoralizing effed. And the longer they stay, the worse they will become.557

To which another team member responded, “All the more reason for us to be here.”558

Building Camp Communities

The FAU and FRS teams implemented their practical experience in air raid shelters and hostels, as well as the training offered at Mount Waltham as they began aiding in the construction not just of DP camps but of communities. Each camp had a Displaced Persons Assembly Center

Camp Staff that included two officers, a cook, a storeman, a clerk, a medical orderly, and drivers for the three-ton and fifteen-hundredweight trucks, and were supported by teams or individual

555 Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, 210–14. 556 Joyce Margaret Parkinson, “Report to Friends House,” June 29, 1946, 93/27/1, Imperial War Museum; Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, 94,96, 210–14; Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951, 81; Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940- 1948, 231. 557 McNeill, By the Rivers of Babylon: A Story of Relief Work Among the Displaced Persons of Europe, 93. 558 McNeill, 93.

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workers from voluntary organizations like the FAU and FRS that eventually took over responsibility.559 The teams also had various liaison officers that worked between national DP groups, between the voluntary relief organizations, and between the voluntary organizations and

Military Government to ensure cooperation and efficiency in relief provided.

In creating a DP camp, the team needed to conduct a survey of all available materials and conditions and begin cleaning and repairing buildings to be used for accommodation. The various types of accommodation included barracks, labor and concentration camps, local schools or gymnasia, factories, barns, or those previously used as transit and assembly centers, which were often left dirty and stripped requiring teams to scrounge for materials.560 To assist in the cleaning and repair work, the teams relied on German laborer’s, typically drawn from local communities, or recruited DPs. For instance, in June 1945, shortly after the FRS RS100 team arrived in

Brunswick, Germany to aid in the establishment of DP camps a nearby camp needed cleaning and repairs for an expected convoy of eight-hundred Polish DPs. Team Leader Joyce Parkinson and

Eryl Hall Williams travelled to Lehre to begin preparations. The camp, Lehre, was located ten miles from Brunswick and included 28,000 DPs of different nationalities housed in two-hundred billets throughout the area. Parkinson, reported that the conditions of the area were appalling:

“People were living in attics, cellars, gardeners’ hut on allotments, factories, wooden-hutten barracks, and occasionally good private houses, or [well-constructed] barracks.”561 In a letter to

Ronald Hadley, Parkinson wrote that they had been told local Germans would come to the camp to assist, but when only eight people arrived, the Polish Commandant from a nearby camp

559 Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government North-West Europe 1944-1946, 353; Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 225–26. 560 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 229; Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government North-West Europe 1944-1946, 353; Parkinson, “Report to Friends House,” June 29, 1946. 561 Parkinson, “Report to Friends House,” June 29, 1946.

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complained to the Bürgermeister. Only after the complaint did more German villagers and a pool of Polish volunteers from a nearby Polish camp joined to help clean the camp.562

Once the camps opened, the teams provided relief associated with the immediate physical needs of the DPs. As discussed in chapter nine, the FAU and FRS assisted in the development of health services aimed at treating and preventing the spread of infectious diseases, as well as in distribution of foodstuff and in feeding programs. The aim of the FAU and FRS, however, was to establish camps that encouraged self-sufficiency and independence was understood as a method of rehabilitation relief. Francesca Wilson argued that a democratic approach with the population receiving aid lessened the possibility of the population becoming “helpless paupers” and fostered self-respect. She also argued that the population receiving aid already had the spiritual resources needed for such a task:

The courage, initiative, readiness for sacrifice, for helping one another, and for governing themselves that have been shown by the guerilla bands fighting in France, the U.S.S.R., with Tito and elsewhere, have proved this, and these forces will be there to be drawn on in the new world to be forged by peace, if the right appeal is made. The relief worker is there to provide the means by which the people help themselves. He must stand aside watching them do it, accepting their advice in his many dilemmas, for Continental peoples are more resourceful than the average over-civilised American or Britisher.563

As soon as reasonably possible the teams began enlisting men and women from the camp population to assist in the development of an administration, employment opportunities, and social services within the camp.

Although the aim of rehabilitation by fostering self-sufficient and independent camps was shared by all the FRS teams posted in Germany, each camp varied as a result of the physical and psychological fitness of its inhabitants, the skills and experience among the population, the materials and resources available to the team and camp population, and the Allied policies for a

562 Joyce Margaret Parkinson, “J.M. Parkinson to Ronald Hadley,” June 1945, 93/27/1, Imperial War Museum. 563 Wilson, “Advice to Relief Workers: Based on Personal Experience in the Field,” 7.

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particular national group—repatriation, absorption, or emigration. Few, if any, camps developed strong administrations or efficient occupational services immediately, but instead took anywhere from several months to several years for results to materialize. To foster cooperation, increase the standard of living in a camp, and address “idleness,” the organizations supported cultural and recreational activities, vocational training, and encouraged in- and out-of-camp employment.

A particular aspect of the DP camps that did not find support among the FRS was the division of camps according to nationality. Based on their training, the FRS teams understood the category of “refugee”—as discussed earlier, the administrative change by SHAEF in 1944 to distinguish “displaced person” as an individual displaced because of the war from a “refugee” as an individual displaced within their home country—included populations from occupied territories, suggesting multiple nationalities. The training program indicated, however, that following a stand- still order and with the establishment of temporary or semi-permanent camps, those spaces could enable the creation of opposing factions stemming from “religious, political, and class difficulties,” though not identifying differences in “nationality” as a contributing factor. Together, their training suggests that their expectation in aiding in the establishment of a “refugee” camp did not coincide with the reality that nationalities would be separated and further posed a challenge to one of their principal aims—to foster internationalism as a means of reconciliation. In the view of those working in DP camps, the segregation forged “competitive nationalism” and fostered both distrust and divisions among the groups.564

In an effort to foster international cooperation, on October 12, 1946, the FRS RS124 team officially launched an international DP club in Goslar. The team acquired a small inn (Gasthaus)

564 Yvonne Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report,” October 31, 1946, FRS/1992/73, Friends House Library; Reid and Gemie, “The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People in Europe After the Second World War, 1945-48,” 231; Carson, “The Friends Relief Service - Faith into Action: Humanitarian Assistance to Displaced Persons Camps in Germany, 1945-1948,” 17, 102–5.

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with an attached Saal to be used as a concert room and dance-hall. After some work on the inn, the team envisioned rooms to be used for reading, discussions and lectures, and games.565 On the day of opening, formally opened with a speech by Colonel Stacpoole from HQ5, included an exhibition of needle-work and toys made by DP sewing and embroidery groups, as well as music and dancing by Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Ukrainian and Estonian DPs. Margaret McNeill initiated the idea of establishing a “Cultural Club” for the camp residents and later described the moment when the Lithuanian DPs took the stage:

[T]he girls with their long full skirts beautifully woven in plaid-like patterns of green and purple, dark red and yellow. The white shirts and trousers and the big flat straw hats worn by the men gave a sunny, open-air appearance to the group, and the graceful sweeping rhythm of their Harvesters’ dance suggested most vividly the mellow beauty of a summer evening in the cornfields.566

The immediate success of opening days was overshadowed when, over the course of several weeks, simple logistics and management of the “Cultural Club” could not be agreed upon: the club committee failed to develop a constitution or agree on the use of space by the various groups.

McNeill noted the exhaustion felt by the team as well as the DPs helping establish the club led to an “unofficial closing”:

It all depressed and perplexed us, for we had yet to learn that, unless there is first goodwill, a love of culture does not necessarily draw people together. To the D.P.s culture was something inextricably associated with their shattered past; it was something that was the outcome of a stable self-respecting society, something far too delicate and complex to be goaded into living growth by tournaments and discussion groups. Nor did we yet fully understand how nerves become lacerated by insecurity, and how initiative is drained away by frustration.567

The cultural club was not the product of spontaneous cooperation and internationalism, but instead imposed by the relief team and, ultimately, served as a lesson learned. After the closing of the club,

565 McNeill, By the Rivers of Babylon: A Story of Relief Work Among the Displaced Persons of Europe, 137–38. 566 McNeill, 142–43. 567 McNeill, 152.

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however, the spontaneous gathering of DPs for an evening of international song and dance at the

Quaker House lifted the spirits of the team, the DPs, and a new tradition took hold with semi- regular song and dance events.

The FRS believed that, in conjunction with cultural and recreational activities, the occupation and employment of DPs would help with their rehabilitation and preparation for a new future. Occupations within the camps, however, emerged as a result of both the aim of rehabilitation and, if not more, from the basic physical needs of the population and camp living space. In the immediate postwar period, Europe experienced an intense shortage not just of food and fuel, but also of clothing. Despite donations from clothing drives in the United States, Canada,

Britain, New Zealand, and Australia, DPs experienced sporadic shortages and often relied their imagination in re-fitting and sewing clothes. To address the shortage of clothing while at the same time initiate self-help, the FRS promoted sewing and knitting groups, helped with the development of workshops and apprenticeships, and, in some instances, with camp co-operative stores.

The DP women in Goslar and Brunswick formed small sewing, embroidery, and knitting groups over the course of 1946 and 1947 to make clothing, as well as toys for camp children.

Ukrainian women, who lived privately and not within the camps at Goslar, gathered every day at the “Light Industry and Craft Centre” to pull apart “bed socks” and re-knit them into baby clothes while other members embroidered and sewed old sacks for cushion covers. Estonian and

Lithuanian women living within the DP camps worked collaboratively to make Christmas toys, particularly dolls with national or modern dresses “according to taste,” for all the children in the

Kreis. Marrack wrote that, “As the news of these activities spread to other camps, we are constantly beset with requests that similar groups should be started elsewhere but it is almost impossible to

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use this enthusiasm in view of the acute shortage of materials.”568 Likewise, Mabel Weiss, FRS

RS100 Team Leader in Brunswick, reported on a knitting group and girls embroidery class that met daily with the latter being so popular an evening class was started for the YWCA twice a week.569

Once interest was established, Goslar and Brunswick teams aided camp residents first in the establishment of vocational training programs for young people in the camp workshops and then, as opportunities grew and supplies allowed, the development of DP workshop cooperatives.

The Golsar camp included a tailor’s shop with ten employed DPs and a “steady training of apprentices,” an embroidery shop with anywhere between five and eight Ukrainian workers, as well as a watchmakers shop that had one skilled worker and one apprentice.570 Over several months, the DPs created the Displaced Persons Co-Operative to manage the workshops, training, employment, and pay of workers. In October 1946, the Goslar camp held an exhibit showcasing all the work and efforts of the workshops. McNeill reported:

[W]e felt a special sense of achievement as we looked at the carefully made nursery furniture, the child’s cot with its simple handmade mattress, the somewhat dumpy but oh so lovable toy animals, the set of joiners tools and most satisfying of all, the small pair of stout leather shoes, - one of many made out of tattered Army leather jerkins. All things made in the workshops that have been started in the camps, made from material either sorted from salvage dumps or sent from home; made to be used by the people themselves in their everyday lives, which have to so large an extent been deprived of these simple homely things which play so real a part in domestic life. […] While conscious of the responsibility of guiding its future development along the wisest lines, we are very proud of the creative vigour our DPs have shown and certain that the more material we can get for them to work on, the better.571

568 Yvonne Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 17,” August 31, 1946, FRS/1992/73, Friends House Library. 569 “RS100 Brunswick Team Report,” January 1947, FRS/1992/72/3, Friends House Library. 570 Yvonne Marrack, “RS124 Goslar, German Welfare Work, General Activities Report No. 1,” July 2, 1946, FRS/1992/73, Friends House Library. 571 Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report,” October 31, 1946.

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Members of the relief team were impressed with the initiative of the camp residents in the creation of a cooperative, and in particular the ability of residents in the administration of their own and camp affairs.572 The only difficulties, as noted by Marrack in a September 1946 report, “are caused by the fact that in all cases people representing six different nationalities are involved.”573 The team, rather than maintain or take over responsibility in difficult situations, understood their job was to help the residents find a way through the challenges of cohabitation amidst postwar shortages.

Similarly, in February 1947, the FRS RS100 team in Brunswick helped with the creation of a Camp Welfare Committee in Gypsy Camp dedicated to determining the needs and difficulties of the camp residents. The Committee was determined to provide younger DPs with the opportunity of learning a trade in areas such as carpentry, shoemaking, and tailoring. One month later, two tailors and two dressmakers established a workshop and apprenticed one boy and two girls. Their team leader noted in a report that, “Many more girls would like to be trained but our lack of sewing machines makes it impossible to accept them. The quantity and quality of the work done has improved.”574 That same month, the DP opened a co-operative camp store to sell products from the camp workshops with proceeds going to the workers. The report read that the initiative was successful: “On Fridays when the goods have just been brought in, the tables look very gay with their piles of children’s clothes, dolls, toys and fancy goods; but after Monday’s queue of mothers has come and gone, remarkably little remains.”575 The establishment of DP cooperatives within and across camps ensured that when a relief team either moved on to another camp location

572 Yvonne Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 3,” September 3, 1946, FRS/1992/73, Friends House Library. 573 Marrack. 574 “RS100 Brunswick Team Report,” March 1947, FRS/1992/72/3, Friends House Library. 575 “RS100 Brunswick Team Report.”

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or if relief programs were to conclude altogether, the DP community could take full responsibility for their economic welfare and be self-supporting.

In-camp occupations were not the only option available to DPs. In an effort to assist with employment of DPs, in July 1946 the FRS RS124 established an Employment Office in their Relief

Detachment Office in Goslar. The office was overseen by Dr. Onystczuk, a Ukrainian, and under his supervision was one representative from the Baltic and one from the Polish communities.576

Shortly after establishing the Employment Office, FRS team member John Bubb, Dr. Onystczuk, and a representative of the North German Timber Control Commission, Mr. Saunders, met to discuss the question of employment to DPs:

Mr. Saunders has six complete saw-mill units which he has been unable to set up because of the labour shortage. If there are a sufficient number of volunteers in Kreis Goslar he is willing to set up these mills in the Harz area. This would mean that each mill can be run by the displaced people themselves under their own managers and foremen.577

By August, there was an increase in cooperation between the DPs, the Military Government, and the Quakers in the implementation of a successful work program in the timber industry with 350

DP men from all nationalities employed by the North German Timber Control by the end of the month.578 Marrack noted in her report the advantages to the program included the opportunity for people will be able to live in their own camp and work daily, learn different aspects of the industry, and develop a skilled occupation on the event of emigration. Ultimately, this had been the goal— rehabilitation and self-help—to provide the space, tools, and skills necessary for DPs to make their own life in Germany, their home country, or after emigration to a new country.

576 Yvonne Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 15,” July 13, 1946, FRS/1992/73, Friends House Library. 577 Marrack. 578 Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 17”; McNeill, By the Rivers of Babylon: A Story of Relief Work Among the Displaced Persons of Europe, 133.

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Beginning in 1946, although the FRS continued training volunteers in driving and mechanics in Britain, the teams in the British Occupation Zone began transferring ambulance and transport services as well as the maintenance of vehicles to local organizations, DPs and refugees.579 The goal of first integrating DPs, refugees, and locals into relief schemes had been to ensure those populations did not become pauperized by the aid given by either the FAU or the

FRS. Once the teams could initiate a transfer of services, the responsibility of those services supported the second goal of postwar rehabilitation. Roger Wilson later commented that, “In some ways it was more difficult to hand over responsibility than to retain it, and the immediate results were usually a lower standard of achievement.”580

The FRS RS124 arranged for a transfer of ambulance services in Goslar to the local

German Red Cross (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz) in August 1946, but found the decision “too hasty” as the organization could handle less than half the emergency calls the team received and were unable to undertake ambulance work at night.581 As a result, the team had to adapt the plan. In her monthly report, Goslar team leader, Yvonne Marrack, wrote:

Another scheme is now in a process of being tried out. One of our Ambulances is on call each night at the Estonian Camp Hessenkopf where two D.P.-drivers are on alternate night shifts. The camp doctors and nurses ring them direct and make their own arrangements with the various hospitals. This is but another step in encouraging independent action. During the day the Ambulance stand by the 50 DPACs [Displaced Persons Assembly Center] building and is at the disposal of the Medical Office.”582

The handing over of ambulance services to the DPs proved successful and serves as an example of democratization of relief work. The Goslar team also incorporated DPs and refugees into the

579 Yvonne Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report,” September 30, 1946, FRS/1992/73, Friends House Library; Michael Lee, “RS125 Cologne Report No. 14,” February 10, 1946, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library; Walter Southwell, “RS100 Brunswick Team Report,” May 1947, FRS/1992/72/3, Friends House Library. 580 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 232. 581 Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 17.” 582 Marrack.

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garages that maintained the vehicles used for ambulance and transport services, though this scheme also had hitches. In October 1946, Marrack wrote, “The garage continues to work well and keeps most of our vehicles on the road. It may be noted that keeping the peace between the Ukrainian,

Latvian, Jewish, Polish and German staff is not always easy.”583 The benefit of integrating DPs into these services was three-fold. First, employment in an occupation kept the individuals busy and a day-to-day sense of purpose. Second, the integration of DPs, refugees, and locals into occupations – as ambulance drivers or as mechanics – ensured the FRS could implement the mandate of self-help and rehabilitation among a receiving population. Finally, the opportunity for the FRS to challenge different ethnic and national groups to work collaboratively promoted internationalism and helped with the larger challenge of integrating refugees and DPs into local communities. With the FRS RS124 this happened in an unexpecting capacity – a mechanics garage.

In 1947, the British government developed a labor resettlement program called “Westward

Ho!” that sought to bring employable DPs from the occupation zone in Germany to Britain to work in British industries or in domestic posts. Britain was not the first or only country to see opportunity in the DPs as potential workers through emigration programs; Belgium initiated a labor resettlement program in the fall of 1946 by bringing up to 22,000 DPs to work as coal miners and in early 1947 Canada sent representatives to DP camps hoping to recruit girls and women to emigrate for spinning mills in Quebec. 584 The program, “Westward Ho!,” followed on the footsteps of an earlier, smaller program in November 1946 called “Balt Sygnet” that brought 2,500

Baltic women to Britain for hospital training and work and a second wave of 6,000 women for

583 Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report,” September 30, 1946. 584 Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, 329–30; Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951, 188–89.

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domestic work. 585 The success of “Balt Sygnet” paved the way for “Westward Ho!” and recruitment began in March and April 1947.

Contemporaries as well as modern scholars have criticized the lure of DPs into labor resettlement programs. Relief workers, such as FRS RS124 in Goslar, played a large part in explaining the program as well as encouraging cooperation between DPs, the Ministry of Labour and Control Commission for Germany (CCG/BE), who were responsible for the registration and movement of the DPs accepted for the program. The RS124 team reported:

The scheme was put into operation with bewildering speed, at any rate in this area where the Ministry of Labour representative arrived to interview applicants 24 hours after the D.P.s had been first informed of the possibility of their going to England It was presented to them in a [very] fair and reasonable way. The first immediate response was an almost 100% willingness to go, but since they have had time to think over it, many doubts and uncertainties assail the D.P.s about the future.586

The DPs, as well as relief workers, had advocated for emigration programs instead of repatriation schemes, but the labor resettlement program did not include the possibility of whole families travelling to Britain. The report continues:

To the D.P.s the separation from their families is a very bitter and to many an incomprehensible blow. In the past seven years they have suffered the miseries of separation to a degree unknown to most of us and the hope for the future has always been based on the family unit. Apart from the anxiety as to who will look after the welfare of their wives and children while they are parted, many are worried by vague fears that events may separate them forever from their families while other, more practically-minded, are wondering what will happen to them if after the first year’s work contract, they are no longer wanted in England.587

Roger Wilson claimed that regardless of ability, skills, or training, those who work in Britain would have been an asset to the economy, yet were “disqualified by their unwillingness to leave

585 Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951, 189; Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, 334. 586 Margaret McNeill, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report,” April 1947, FRS/1992/73, Friends House Library. 587 McNeill.

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their families and their old people behind.”588 Historians have argued the restrictive policy regarding dependents, attempts to restrict where DPs could work, and, ultimately, the continuation of what several contemporaries regarded as a continuation of slave-labor earned

Britain a black mark.589

Children in DP Camps

An area in which the FAU and FRS noted some measure of success was in the child feeding programs. In a 1989 interview with Lyn Smith on her recollections and experiences in the FRS and FAU, Lilian Cadoux captured this aspect of relief splendidly when she stated, "that’s what you do in a relief situation, keep the younger generation nourished.”590 Most, if not all, of the child feeding schemes took place in schools or welfare centers, which reflected the lessons in nutrition and catering back in war-time Britain.

Pip Turner, FAU, tasked with creating a survey on the conditions in Bochum, recalled, “At one point I was asked to write a confidential report about the children: I remember a great deal of rickets and there was quite a lot of oedema - swollen stomachs. We selected the malnourished children and concentrated on them.”591 Reports suggest that though deficiency diseases among children occurred, particularly rickets in children found in former Nazi concentration camps at liberation, the main concern among relief teams had been the weight of children. Turner continues,

“I went round the schools organizing feeding schemes. We did cocoa and milk drinks, trying to get as much nourishment into one drink as we could.”592 Child feeding schemes also served

588 Wilson, Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends, 1940-1948, 237. 589 Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, 337; Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951, 189; Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee, 110–11. 590 Cadoux, Lilian Violet. 591 Smith, Pacifists in Action, 330. 592 Smith, 330.

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purposes beyond restoring the physical health of children after a period of war, internment, and deprivation. By establishing feeding schemes in rehabilitated schools or in newly established welfare centers meant the relief teams could tackle child malnutrition, re-education, and reconciliation through democratic relief.

In June 1946, the FRS RS124 Goslar team opened a Quaker Holiday Home in Bundheim with the aim of giving, “every child in Kreis Goslar a 12 day holiday with the maximum amount of fresh air and good food.”593 With the help of DPs, the team transformed a former transit camp for west-bound DPs into a hostel for children. When the hostel opened twenty-nine Ukrainian children between the ages of seven and fourteen were greeted with their own mattress, linens, towels, and soap. The FRS RS124 Team Leader, Yvonne Marrack wrote in her report that, “Many of these children have never had a bed or a towel to themselves before and it is one of the first things they wrote home about.”594 The hostel staff included a Polish warden, helped by his German wife and her mother and two German maids, a “stateless Russian from Latvia,” and four helpers who arrive with the children each day.

The daily program for the children began with breakfast, followed by tidying the room by one group on orderly duty while the other groups played. This mirrors the training camps at Manor

Farm and Mount Waltham. From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. a “Kinderwagen,” an Army 3-tonner, transports the children and their food to the mountains where they learn to make a campfire to cook their food, as well as play games. After returning to the hostel, the children ate supper, played games, painted, sing and dance. Before bed, the staff served cocoa and biscuits. At the end of their stay at the hostel, the children invited their parents and the Quakers for a “Parents Day” that included entertainment in the form of sports, singing and dancing. The team reported the first “Parents Day,”

593 Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 15.” 594 Marrack.

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“was very successful and both the children and parents appeared to enjoy themselves.”595 The second group expected at the hostel were Polish children between the ages of one and twelve years old. Marrack noted that although they are much younger than the first lot, “they seem to be even more thrilled at the thought of such a holiday.”596 In August 1946, the hostel welcomed two more groups of children with the first being a twenty-six Polish children and the second nineteen White

Russians and Ukrainians joined by three Romanians from a nearby Kreis. The team report notes the feeling of success regarding their efforts with the Holiday Home.597

The RS100 team in Brunswick reported on the “Cocoa Club,” created by Margot Rue of the Save the Children Fund. Following a medical assessment to determine caloric needs, the club invited twenty DP and twenty German children aged fourteen to eighteen to participate. The team report notes:

The supplies needed for 10 children for 1 month are: - 18 lbs. milk, 9 lbs. cocoa, 9 lbs. sugar. German supplies will be used for the German children and joint D.P. supplies for the Poles and Yugoslavs as the B.R.C. do not feel this is the moment to pool the 2 sources of food. The D.P. club committee have been most co-operative in offering the use of their canteen from 5-6 pm. five days a week. It is in a central position and here the children will come to get their cocoa, the Germans mostly coming straight from work. One member of one of the teams and two B.A.O.R. wives will serve the cocoa. It is hoped that the children will stay and meet socially; picture papers and games are available in the canteen room.598

The “Cocoa Club” gave children access to additional calories as well as an opportunity to rebuild a sense of community through socialization of children and parents. The club proved successful and continued into the spring of 1947. A report on “German Work” by the team noted both the children and parents entered the club with a positive spirit, which led to an international program that included “Polish dancing, Yugo-Slavian songs and a German charade on the word

595 Marrack. 596 Marrack. 597 Marrack; Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 17”; Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report,” September 30, 1946. 598 “RS100 Brunswick Team Report,” February 1947, FRS/1992/72/3, Friends House Library.

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‘Freundschaft’.”599 Clubs like this sprouted in various areas with support from the FRS beginning in 1946 and extending through 1948. For example, the Quaker Center in Cologne, created from

“Swedish Barracks,” hosted feeding programs for under-nourished children, served as a daycare, and became a central meeting place for local youth organizations. The FRS teams drew on their training to address the physical wellbeing and health of children as well as the organizational tradition of utilizing collaborative, democratic relief to foster a sense of community through reconciliation and internationalism. The development of schemes dedicated to reconciliation, particularly among German youth, will be examined in-depth in the next chapter.

Challenges in DP Camps: Food, Fuel, and Transport

Several reports indicate that accessing replacement parts for nonfunctioning vehicles and the shortage of petrol created a constant challenge for the FAU and FRS teams in the British

Occupation Zone. The general wear and tear in the life of a vehicle meant that the cars, lorries and trucks, and ambulances the teams used required weekly maintenance. Since all FAU and FRS teams had at least one individual with training in mechanics, it was not necessarily a problem with manpower and even if a shortage did occur, locals or DPs could be recruited to help. The main problem came from a lack of materials or parts for replacement. For instance, the FRS RS124 team in Goslar reported in July 1946 that of all the vehicles – two Austins, one Ford, One Morris, and two Commers – the two Commers needed new engines.600 Only until the parts needed arrived from

Vlotho or through BRCS channels could the mechanics begin repair work. Teams also submitted applications to Vlotho for additional trucks, and though a few teams received trucks, many were waitlisted as demands came from all over the zone. Furthermore, the shortage and rationing of

599 Walter Southwell, “RS100 Brunswick Team Report,” April 1947, FRS/1992/72/3, Friends House Library. 600 Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 15.”

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petrol not only hindered transporting goods, but for teams like FRS RS154 that wanted to begin driving lessons in Solingen in order to begin transferring all transport services over to local services, the lack of petrol made such schemes difficult to implement. Other teams, faced with a shortage of petrol, adapted their transport services by utilizing smaller vehicles that required less petrol.

As foodstuff and supplies came on transport from the Vlotho Headquarters or required transport from larger towns into smaller villages or DP camps, the teams relied heavily on working vehicles to ensure feeding and larger relief schemes could proceed unhindered. Johannes-Dieter

Steinert argues in the first three years of postwar relief efforts, a shortage of the “unholy trinity” – food, fuel, and transport – left Germany, as well as large parts of Europe, with inadequate food supply that heightened hostility among Germans and affected relief schemes by smaller voluntary organizations.601 In June 1946, the RS154 in Solingen reported on the immediate impact of and the steps taken by the team to address the petrol shortage:

A crisis arose this month, when the allocation of petrol made by the Town for transporting the meals from the kitchen to the centres was reduced so much that it looked as if it would be impossible to carry on for more than a few days. Negotiations on our part with the authorities proved successful in that while less was granted than before, we have been allowed enough petrol to enable us to carry on the scheme.602

An essential component to efficient relief was the relationships the teams established with local and British Military Government authorities. Any disruption in relief schemes, after all, had a direct impact on the welfare and rehabilitation of populations, as well as local affairs and crime rates.

In conjunction with disruption to transporting goods, food, and materials, the FRS teams had to confront crises that arose when the Military Government cut rations. In March 1946, a lack

601 Johannes-Dieter Steinert, “Food and the Food Crisis in Post-War Germany, 1945–1948: British Policy and the Role of British NGOs,” in Food and Conflict in Europe in the Age of the Two World Wars, ed. Frank Trentmann and Flemming Just (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2006), 266–88, https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230597495_12. 602 “RS154 Solingen Report No. 2,” June 10, 1946, FRS/1992/74, Friends House Library.

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of grains and wheat imports resulted in a decision by the Military Government in the British Zone to cut rations. Although the DP population received better rations than Germans on paper, local

Germans could supplement their diet with produce grown in their own gardens or access to fresh fruit, vegetables, or meat from German neighbors or local farms. The FRS125 team in Cologne reported that those most affected by ration cuts included the poor populations who either did not have reserves or access to the black market, as well as “the hard-working non-manual workers who have no time to shop.”603 Populations responded to ration cuts by the looting food shops and stores maintained by relief organizations. A Swiss relief team reported to RS125 that an armed gang in Cologne looted their stores on March 3, 1946 leading to a request for a British guard to help with security.604 In her study, “Grams, Calories, and Food: Languages of Victimization,

Entitlement, and Human Rights in Occupied Germany 1945-1949,” Atina Grossmann argues the emerging “novel language” centered on “grams of fat and total daily calories, vitamins, or cigarettes and coffee allotments” created a new, yet constantly shifting, understanding of victimization, entitlement, and recognition of groups.605 The FRS reports suggest that as all teams faced challenges with food shortages, there had been few options outside of simply requesting more supplies be sent to their locations and continuing distribution of the foodstuff available.

Collectively, these challenges often resulted in theft and also had the potential of enabling or increasing black market activity as populations struggled to get basic foodstuff, fuel, or clothing.606 Scholarship on the immediate post-war period and the refugee crisis argues that the magnitude of the black market with participants including DPs, Germans, Allied troops, and relief

603 Michael Lee, “RS125 Cologne Report No. 18,” April 25, 1946, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library. 604 Michael Lee, “RS125 Cologne Report No. 16,” March 23, 1946, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library. 605 Grossmann, “Grams, Calories, and Food: Languages of Victimization, Entitlement, and Human Rights in Occupied Germany 1945-1949,” 123. 606 Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report,” October 31, 1946.

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workers, disabled efforts by the Allied Governments, the UNRRA, as well as by the FAU and FRS in controlling and policing black market activities.607 Ben Shephard aptly suggests, “Postwar

Germany was run by the black market. […] To meet almost every need, it was necessary to play the black market, and only a few people too principled not to.”608 With that, some teams found it difficult to condemn the black-market activities and often argued the black market kept people alive. The FRS RS15 Goslar team reported:

Deplorable though it may have been, there is no doubt that the D.P. relied on their issue of coffee as barter with the Germans to obtain more food, mostly vegetables. They now only get a tiny issue of ersatz coffee and, deprived of their means to barter, the change over to German ration scales means a much greater cut in food than would appear on paper. No- one can defend the practice of black-marketing, but for anyone concerned with maintaining the morale of the D.P’s, the helplessness of their present position seems very serious.609

For the DP population, the black market afforded them with access to foodstuff otherwise unavailable or as supplement for an already low-caloric based rationing system. What the Goslar team points out, however, is the psychological affect the black market had on the population. The black market enabled DPs to regain a sense of agency and purchasing power, when that diminished, the DPs lost “morale” and felt “helpless.” The FRS mandate regarding self-help and rehabilitation ensured that the concerns about low morale as expressed by the teams could be addressed.

Challenges in Medical Relief and Rehabilitation

The emergency medical relief work of the FAU and FRS teams in transit centers and after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps concerned the prevention of epidemic and the

607 Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951, 116; Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, 283; Gemie et al., Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War 1936-48, 185; Dearden (Clarkson), “ET Clarkson Correspondence.” 608 Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, 283. 609 Yvonne Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report,” November 30, 1946, FRS/1992/73, Friends House Library.

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immediate treatment of populations suffering from starvation and highly infectious disease. Once the war concluded and with the creation of semi-permanent camps for DPs and refugees, the FAU and FRS teams experienced a transition in their work. Teams posted to villages, camps, and cities with large displaced and refugee populations were tasked with surveying, reporting, and developing programs to assist in the rehabilitation of the health and welfare among populations receiving aid. Per the tradition and mandate of the organizations, the teams actively sought to avoid pauperization of the people they assisted; in the case of infectious diseases, the teams began by aiding in the restoration of local medical services and with certain diseases, such as TB, advocated for the establishment of permanent sanitariums.

Conditions in DP camps and in areas experiencing a rise in refugees did not facilitate quick recovery or prevention in the spread of TB. Surveys and reports by the FAU and FRS indicate overcrowding, lack of proper nutrition including fats and proteins, and the lack of impartiality with regards to relief provided to DPs and refugees by “the Powers that Be” that inadvertently enabled the continuance of TB.610 Though most areas in the British Occupied Zone did not experience epidemic levels of TB, prevention and treatment continued to be a concern well after the initial liberation and institution of occupation in Germany. 611 Despite advancements in antibiotic treatment for TB, the preferred method of treatment and prevention remained in the creation or rehabilitation of sanitariums. The sanitoria that existed in Germany prior to the war served as hospitals and prisoner of war camps when the Military Government gained control of Germany in

1945, thus in several instances the problem concerned the creation of new institutions.612

610 John Adamson and Helen Adamson, “Helen and John Adamson, Friends Ambulance Unit,” 1995, MISC 256/2/6/1, Imperial War Museum; Esmond R. Long, “Tuberculosis in Germany,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 34, no. 6 (June 15, 1948): 271–77; M. Daniels and P. D’Arcy Hart, “Tuberculosis in the British Zone of Germany: Report of an Inquiry,” The British Medical Journal 1, no. 4549 (March 13, 1948): 508. 611 Daniels and D’Arcy Hart, “Tuberculosis in the British Zone of Germany: Report of an Inquiry,” 508. 612 Long, “Tuberculosis in Germany,” 274.

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Furthermore, the war and mobilization led to the decrease of medical professionals, medical officers overseeing a Kreis, and public health services, which not only assisted in the maintenance of sanitoria but also in the screening and treatment of populations. The FAU and FRS assisted in the creation or rehabilitation of buildings to be used as sanitariums, however, the administration of medical services depended on the restoration of local German doctors and nurses or, in some instances, by the DPs themselves. Again, this empowered the populations to help themselves in rehabilitation.

Though the concern for TB reveals itself in several reports and surveys, the same cannot be said for treatment and prevention of venereal diseases. To be sure, the instances of venereal diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea increased dramatically from 1945 to 1946. A report in the

British Occupied Zone indicates cases of syphilis from November 1945 to September 28, 1946 increased from 2,352 to 4,090, and cases of gonorrhea over the same period increased from 6,648 to 8,553.613 The only FRS team in this study to report on incidence of venereal diseases was RS145 posted to Landkreis Recklinghausen; a June 1947 report notes that between 1939 and 1946 reported cases of syphilis increased from 54 to 369 and cases of gonorrhea from 70 to 840 in a population of approximately 220,000.614 Examples found in the reports provide insight into the reasons why venereal disease had been underreported by relief teams, as well as the difficulties in both treatment and prevention.

Prior to the war, the responsibility for dealing with venereal disease resided with a medical officer of a Kreis, yet research on postwar conditions found that individuals suffering from venereal disease often sought help from private practitioners or specialists.615 One doctor, who

613 F.R. Curtis, “Venereal Diseases in the British-Occupied Zone of Germany,” British Journal of Venereal Diseases 23, no. 1 (March 1947): 27. 614 Parkinson, “Miss JM Parkinson.” 615 Curtis, “Venereal Diseases in the British-Occupied Zone of Germany,” 20.

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worked alongside the FAU in Wentorf and Bergedorf, Dr. S. Chalmers Parry found that tradition of private medical assistance continued. He would later recall, “For persons, suffering from V.D. sought treatment outside the camp hospitals – much in the same way as cases of V.D., occurring in England, often prefer to attend the not so local Clinics. However, history does record one memorable night when the military made a raid in the camp on some ‘unlicensed’ premises with a queue of several hundreds waiting outside.”616 This, coupled with reports conducted in the

British Zone of Occupation, suggests that the minimal reporting on venereal disease by the FAU and FRS does not indicate a lack of presence, but instead individuals continued to seek treatment of such diseases from private doctors.

The discovery of penicillin in 1929, followed by the US and British collaborative efforts to synthesize the drug for therapeutic use between 1941 and 1943 changed the ways in which venereal diseases could be treated. Initially, the low production of penicillin in 1943 meant the military received the bulk of supply, especially since penicillin could serve as a therapeutic drug in the treatment of various diseases. Only by the late 1940s its use in the treatment of human diseases, such as venereal diseases, became widely available.617 With regard to access, before penicillin could be widely distributed, the British Military Government established a system with

German public health authorities and take steps to ensure the drug did not leak into the black- market.618 Public health initiatives between the British Military Government and the newly created

German Public Health Advisory Committee established that treatment for venereal diseases would be free without question, the private doctor was required to maintain a confidential register of

616 S. Chalmers Parry, “Some Medical Problems at a Camp for Displaced Persons,” n.d., 4, MISC 256/2/6/4, Imperial War Museum. 617 Irwin C. Sherman, Twelve Diseases That Changed Our World (Washington, D.C.: ASM Press, 2007), 96; John Patrick Swann, “The Search for Synthetic Penicillin during World War II,” The British Journal for the History of Science 16, no. 2 (July 1983): 154–90. 618 Curtis, “Venereal Diseases in the British-Occupied Zone of Germany,” 28.

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patients seen and suffering from the diseases, and the public health authorities had to appoint a venereal disease specialist to oversee all aspects of the problem and treatment and submit reports on the progress and treatment of cases.619

A May 1946 report from the RS124 indicates the implementation of the system for checking and registering venereal disease. The report reads, “When patients leave the hospital a register is kept of follow-up treatments. When possible contacts are also traced and examined.”620

Difficulty arises, even within the new system, when the individual gives a false name during registration.621 A false name not only hinders the possibility of follow-up treatment, but also the investigation of source-finding or contact-tracing by doctors.

A 1948 report details case-finding in the British Zone. The first method considered consisted of a diagnosis of disease and questioning of infectious source by a doctor, and then followed with contacting the source:

[I]f [the doctor] succeeded in eliciting a name and address, he would write to the woman and tell her she should either come to him for examination or, if she chose to go to another doctor, should send a certificate to the former doctor. […] If no notice were taken of this, the name and address would be sent to the police and the woman would then be arrested (if found), flung into prison, compulsorily examined and, if necessary, treated, generally in hospital.622

The second method resembles the first except that information gained from the individual would be directed to the Health Office. The third method, “doing nothing,” had been found to be the most commonly used. The report clearly suggests a bias against women in the treatment of venereal disease. The report does not indicate how the method applies, or was applied, to men. Furthermore, the “woman” imprisoned and treated, if found infected, could not have been infected without

619 Curtis, 27. 620 “RS124 Goslar Correspondence,” 1948 1946, FRS/1992/73, Friends House Library. 621 “RS124 Goslar Correspondence.” 622 Curtis, “Venereal Diseases in the British-Occupied Zone of Germany,” 23.

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having intercourse prior. This then raises the problematic nature of case-finding; the assumption that the disease begins with a woman, leaving the male who passed the disease on uncontacted and untreated.

In a study on the relationship between DPs, venereal disease, and the UNRRA in Germany between 1945 and 1947, Lisa Haushofer argues the pervasiveness of this attitude within the

Military Government led to a policy of compulsory examinations of female DPs in Germany, to which the UNRRA had varying responses.623 In some instances, the UNRRA teams rejected compulsory examinations arguing the practice was discriminatory and superfluous, whereas others adopted the policy either because they sought to prove the low incidence among female DPS or, like the Military Government, believed women served as infectious agents.624 Ultimately, the overall instance of venereal disease among DP camps, according to a 1948 report, in relation to the size of population was low despite living conditions being regarded as “ideally suitable.”625

Conclusions

Once the FAU and FRS entered Germany in the spring of 1945, the first steps taken coincided with the Allied policy of repatriation and although that policy was largely successful among west-bound DPs, over the course of the fall of 1945 and spring of 1946 the policy became increasingly more difficult to implement. The FAU, having moved into German relief work, took on less of a role among DPs whereas the FRS continued to work in the DP camps they helped organize and build. As government bodies and the UNRRA created repatriation schemes and other

623 Lisa Haushofer, “The ‘Contaminating Agent’ UNRRA, Displaced Persons, and Venereal Disease in Germany, 1945–1947,” American Journal of Public Health 100, no. 6 (2010): 993–1003, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2008.153098. 624 Haushofer. 625 Curtis, “Venereal Diseases in the British-Occupied Zone of Germany,” 27.

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solutions to the “DP problem,” the FRS actively engaged with the DP populations to establish communities within the camps to foster stability, self-sufficiency, and rehabilitation. They did this by following the framework provided during their training; the teams created recreational programs for DP children, encouraged international cooperation and collaboration through vocational training and workshop cooperatives, and worked as liaisons to get DPs out-of-camp occupations.

The FAU and FRS employed the skills gained from their training programs, but also had to confront new challenges as part of a larger governmental and international relief scheme in

British Occupied Germany. The teams faced several challenges resulting from sheer number of

DPs needing relief and rehabilitation, the system of rationing, and overall lack of both foodstuff and medical supplies. Complications such as the growth and vitality of the Black Market proved not only difficult to dismantle, but also inspired a sense of empathy among FRS teams for groups that did not have access to additional foodstuff. The teams realized a measure of success in the programs aimed to foster self-help, such as the work with local doctors and nurses in the establishment or re-establishment of medical services and, in cases like TB, sanitoriums. The teams also developed and implemented feeding schemes focused on DP children, which often extended beyond the basic purpose of supplying food to included opportunities for reconciliation, education, and cultural activities among multiple ethnic and national DP groups. Not all approaches to reconciliation relief worked, as shown by the example of a DP Club in Goslar. The programs and initiatives developed by the FRS teams needed to reflect the interest and goals of the DPs receiving aid. Reports from relief teams and memoirs written by individual members offer insight into the complexities of DP relief, rehabilitation, and reconciliation. Those sources

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also reveal an authentic concern among relief workers for the desperate plight of populations considered “stateless” in the British Occupation Zone.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN: “STAGES TWO AND THREE” AND THE GERMAN YOUTH

In January 1946, Dr. Audrey Russell gave a lecture at the FRS training center, Woodstock, on the relief needed among the German population. Hugh Maw, a volunteer to the FRS and training at that time, later described the lecture given. He noted that Dr. Russell emphasized the devested social welfare programs and that FRS relief workers should not “take over and show them how or what we did in Britain,” but instead work alongside the German population, befriend, listen, and support so as to build confidence and self-sufficiency. Furthermore, Dr. Russell explained the

“shattered state of the German civil administration and their internal affairs.” In a summary of her lecture, Maw notes:

The people at the head, whom she had met, were elderly but sound; the lower ranks and administrators were exhausted. Our main task would be to get the Non-Governments Organisations (NGOs), voluntary agencies and Church Welfare organisations reactivated, and harness the workers, using university students wherever possible. In general, our task would be to act impartially, in a liaison capacity, between the local administration on the ground and the Military Government officials, under the protection of the British Red Cross. We would find that the ‘Quäker Speisung’ after the First World War had not been forgotten, was trusted and many doors would be opened for us.626

That Dr. Russell offered her insights on Germany to a group of trainees in 1946 underscores the attitude of the FRS towards the rehabilitation of German populations in immediate postwar period.

It was imperative that volunteers understood their role in that process and the importance of impartiality in relief work. The purpose of this chapter is to examine how the FAU and FRS approached the “second and third stage” of relief work among German youth and university students in the British Occupation Zone. Although the work of the FRS incorporated elements of the Allied policies for “re-education” through democratization and de-Nazification, the primary

626 Maw, The Training and Experience of a Quaker Relief Worker, 1946-1948, 23.

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aim of the FRS was not “re-education,” rather their efforts focused on fostering reconciliation, cooperation, and rebuilding community in war-torn Germany.

“Re-Education” and German Youth

A report published in 1946, written by German-Jewish refugee Henry J. Kellermann, characterized German youth as politically apathetic, disillusioned, and demoralized, and further indicated that none had expressed any interest in reconstruction or employment, but instead preferred to engage in criminal activities, the black market, and socializing in the forms of dancing, drinking, and sex.627 Kellerman understood the problem of post-war juvenile delinquency as a symptom of “indoctrination” by the Hitler Youth and nihilism resulting from the breakdown of the

Nazi system.628 Scholar David F. Smith argues that reports, lectures, and conferences on juvenile delinquency in Germany had been a part of an advancing, albeit not widely accepted practice of,

“medicalization of criminology” that linked postwar delinquency to childhood emotional factors and neglect of family life.629 He further argues that British reports did not account for or appreciate that delinquency among German youth had most often been a direct result of malnutrition as well as a lack of clothing and shelter.630 British policy toward German youth in the postwar period echoed that in Britain developed during the interwar period—rehabilitation rather than retribution.631 The Military Governments and voluntary societies in both the American and British

Zones of Occupation took several initiatives to address the growing problem of juvenile delinquency among German youth. The initiatives echoed “rehabilitation” and included: the

627 Henry J. Kellermann, The Present Status of German Youth, European Series 11 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1946). 628 Kellermann, 1. 629 David F. Smith, “Juvenile Delinquency in the British Zone of Germany, 1945-51,” German History 21, no. 1 (1994): 41. 630 Smith, 42. 631 Smith, 41.

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development of Juvenile Offices (Jugendämter) and Juvenile Courts (Jugendgerichte), to address

“wayward, vagrant, and criminal youth”; evening curfews; vocational training and programs;

“House Year” (Hausjahr or Haushaltsjahr), which required domestic service by girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one; building recreational centers (Jugendheime); educational projects; and, as indicated by the cooperative work by the FAU, supporting youth organizations and clubs.632

Alongside rehabilitation, central to the initiatives was the policy of “re-education.” Uta

Gerhardt suggests that “re-education” mirrored, even drew on, concepts practiced in psychiatry in the 1930s called the “mental hygiene movement” that was used as a therapeutic device to change or alter the character structure of patients suffering from severe delusionary disorders such as paranoia. The practice, when coupled with political frameworks, interested contemporary sociologists and cultural anthropologists including Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who sought to understand the population of Germany and what made them distinct or different from the population of the United States to explain the differing natures of totalitarian and democratic societies.633 Concluding that democracy and totalitarianism were diametrically opposed forms of social organization, the Allied governments instituted a policy of “re-educating” the character of the German people by creating a sense of political responsibility and fostering democracy, highlighting such rights as the freedom of speech, of press, and of religion.634

632 Social Service Review, “Juvenile Delinquency in Germany,” The University of Chicago Press 20, no. 4 (December 1946): 570; Kellermann, The Present Status of German Youth, 1. 633 Uta Gerhardt, “Margaret Mead’s ‘Male and Female’ Revisited,” International Sociology 10, no. 2 (June 1, 1995): 197–217; Uta Gerhardt, “American Sociology and German Re-Education After World War II,” in Stunde Null: The End and the Beginning Fifty Years Ago, ed. Geoffrey J. Giles (Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute, 1997), 40–41. 634 Glesni Euros, “The Post-War British ‘Re-Education’ Policy for German Universities and Its Application at the Universities of Göttingen and Cologne (1945-1947),” Research in Comparative & International Education 11, no. 3 (2016): 247–66; David Phillips, Educating the Germans: People and Policy in the British Zone of Germany, 1945- 1949 (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018).

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From the German perspective, the policies and discussions focused on re-education would come to serve a different purpose. Jaimey Fisher argues that the many critical discourses on youth and call for re-education developed into an “essential means by which (adult) Germany narrated its transition from its own, abruptly dubious history; it served as a means that would propel and progress the culture out of the now tainted Wilehlmine, Weimar, and Nazi periods.”635 Fisher suggests that in certain sectors of Nazi culture, the “Nazi revolution” had been imagined as a

“youth revolution”: the youth served as agents in the transformation of Germany from a bourgeois society to a “nationalized, postbourgeois community.”636 Anxious postwar deliberations on the

German youth enabled adult Germany to suggest that it was primarily young Nazis and youth that needed re-education, which in turn enabled Germans to address questions of guilt as well as conflicts with the Allies in highly selective ways.637

The British as well as Germans in Occupied Germany emphasized youth in re-education policies. Beginning in January 1946 and extending into the spring of that year, the FAU worked as a liaison between the Military Government and various German voluntary and welfare organizations. This work, according to A. Telga Davies, provided the FAU with “more direct scope” once the Military Government determined that the independent German organizations banned during the Third Reich should be reinstated.638 The FAU, under direction of the Public Health and

German Welfare Branch of the CCG/BE, traveled to German cities and towns to report on the conditions of associational life and public welfare:

Usually guided at first by a Liaison Office in the Province, each section made a survey of the voluntary and municipal welfare organizations, and of the state of medical services, youth movements, refugee traffic, communal feeding, and other aspects of the town’s

635 Jaimey Fisher, Disciplining Germany: Youth, Reeducation, and Reconstruction after the Second World War (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2007), 4. 636 Fisher, 24. 637 Fisher, 5, 16. 638 Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 436.

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social services. Information was obtained from official departments, from independent authorities and, where possible, from the ‘man in the street.’ Most members had acquired a fair German vocabulary by this time, and several in each section were fluent. It was not difficulties of language so much as the prevalent disorganization, hysteria and breakdown of communications which hampered the surveys.639

Through this work, the FAU collaborated with local German welfare and voluntary organizations such as the Workers’ Welfare Organization (Arbeiterwohlfarht), German Caritas Association

(Deutsche Caritasverband), and the Inner Mission (Innere Mission). For instance, if one of the organizations approached the FAU with a program—the conversion of a bunker into a youth club or assisting with de-lousing in refugee shelters—the team would discuss the plans with the Military

Government, and upon receiving support, the team would begin work as well as help with transportation or provide equipment.640 The liaison work conducted by the FAU in Hannover between January and April 1946 serves as an excellent example of how the FAU approached rehabilitation among German youth in 1946 and aided in the Allied post-war policy of re-education.

The Military Government asked the FAU Section 2 posted in Hannover to supply an overview of youth work and youth organizations within the city. In a letter home, Clifford Barnard noted that with the demise of the Hitler Youth, the local German government as well as church groups expressed a keen interest in developing youth programs and organizations.641 On January

10, 1946 he wrote:

To date we have mostly been going round the city talking to those who are involved in youth work, and have discovered that the churches are the most active, both Caritas Verband (Catholic) and the Lutheran Church have youth sections, and the Social Democrat Party are running a youth club for working class children, which they widely announced is non-political. There were, of course a number of sports clubs of various kinds and they [are] trying to re-establish themselves.642

639 Davies, 438. 640 Davies, 438–39; Smith, Pacifists in Action, 338, 340. 641 Barnard, Binding the Wounds of War: A Young Relief Worker’s Letters Home 1943-47, 105–6. 642 Barnard, 106.

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Barnard also notes that a group of older men were trying to create a Boy Scout troop, but that the

Military Government considered such as organization as too “paramilitary,” and that the local

Communist Party formed a Young Communist League but that the group maintained a low- profile.643 Here, Barnard highlights two concerns expressed by the Education Branch of the

CCG/BE regarding German youth organizations—those organizations developed by and for the

German youth should be non-political and not encourage militarism.

On March 4, 1946, a conference on German youth and schools was held at the office of the

Director of Education, CCG/BE in Bünde. During the conference, Major A.L. Bickford-Smith,

Head of the Youth Section of Education Branch, outlined the four official policies regarding

German youth under the age of eighteen. The first policy emphasize the desired the non-political nature of youth movements and activities, stating that such groups are not permitted to be “directed or sponsored by or for the ends of particular political parties or interests,” yet that conversations and discussions on matters of political importance or to train youth in political awareness had been acceptable for understanding the ideas and practices of democracy. Second, the regeneration of youth groups should include the “inculcation of democracy through living,” and an alternative to the Hitler Youth should be found within revived German youth organizations. The third policy focused on the nature of youth groups; that “state youth movements,” German national youth movements, should not be permitted. The fourth policy suggested that the success of a youth group depends on the “personality of the leader,” which resulted in the development of youth leader training programs. The FRS later took an active role in youth leadership training programs and courses in areas like Cologne by attending the courses and offering lectures on topics such as youth work in England and methods of cross-organization collaboration and cooperation.644 Finally, the

643 Barnard, 106. 644 Bunty Harman, “RS125 Cologne Report No. 25,” August 9, 1946, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library.

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Education Branch of the CCG/BE insisted that voluntary bodies working in the field should feel welcome to share information on how to approach such a policy.645 Following the presentation of policies, Major Bickford-Smith opened the floor to representatives of the voluntary organizations to discuss measures taken, as well as successes and failures, regarding the formation and activities of youth groups in their respective areas.

This conference reflected the approach the British occupiers as well as voluntary organizations took with regards to the rehabilitation and re-education of German youth in the aftermath of the war. As Glesni Euros argues, the British believed that re-education—that emphasized both denazification and democratization—of Germany could not be achieved by imposing a British system from above. Instead, she argues, that British presence on social and political infrastructure could “provide a firm helping hand to show their German cousins how to teach democracy to themselves.”646 The Education Branch of the CCG/BE and voluntary societies had to construct a system that empowered, as well as guided, Germans to help themselves re-enter the European community.647

To help support the growing youth groups in Germany, members of the FAU section in

Hannover worked with Erich Schlicker, Geschäftsführer for Hannover Province, to find appropriate premises to use as youth hostels as those that survived the war had been requisitioned for other purposes such as schools and hospitals.648 Richard Jobs suggests that in the initial postwar period, the Allied powers in Germany had no interest in revitalizing German youth hostels as they

645 “Report of Conference on Youth and Schools in Germany at Bünde,” March 4, 1946, FRS/1992/76, Friends House Library. 646 Euros, “The Post-War British ‘Re-Education’ Policy for German Universities and Its Application at the Universities of Göttingen and Cologne (1945-1947),” 248. 647 Euros, 248. 648 Richard Ivan Jobs, “Youth Mobility and the Making of Europe, 1945-60,” in Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century, ed. Richard Ivan Jobs and David M. Pomfret (Springer, 2016), 148; Barnard, Binding the Wounds of War: A Young Relief Worker’s Letters Home 1943-47, 109.

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viewed them to be a part of the Nazi infrastructure. 649 By the fall of 1945, however, those associated with hostel association in the United States, Britain, and France argued the restoration of the hostels could serve as a useful instrument in Allied plans for denazification and democratization through re-education. 650 Contact between the FAU team in Hannover, Jack

Catchpool, a British Quaker involved in the British Youth Hostels Association, and Schlicker enabled the project to move forward.651 In April 1946, Barnard wrote home that he, Catchpool,

Schlicker, and Southwood, visited buildings used as hostels prior to the war and noted that although the buildings were used for other purposes, they hope the hostels would be returned to their original purpose in time. Indeed, Schlicker pointed out the missing of equipment and furniture.652 Southwood resolved this problem, however, by obtaining “some ex-Hitler Youth wooden double bunks” for the hostels.653 This goal-oriented partnership to support German youth provides a good example of Quaker-German cooperation and problem-solving.

The FAU recognized the changing nature of relief work from the “first stage” into the

“second stage” over the summer of 1945 and by December 1945, the Executive Committee concluded that the demographic of and skills among the FAU team members was not conducive to the shifting nature of relief needed in Europe, which required “maturity and, very often, specialized training the men simply did not have.”654 As a result, the FAU began negotiations with the FRS on the closure of the organization and transfer of individuals interested in continuing work in Europe into the FRS. In January 1946, the FAU had 150 members active in Germany, eighty

649 Jobs, “Youth Mobility and the Making of Europe, 1945-60,” 148. 650 Euros, “The Post-War British ‘Re-Education’ Policy for German Universities and Its Application at the Universities of Göttingen and Cologne (1945-1947),” 259; Jobs, “Youth Mobility and the Making of Europe, 1945- 60,” 148. 651 Barnard, Binding the Wounds of War: A Young Relief Worker’s Letters Home 1943-47, 117. 652 Barnard, 119. 653 Barnard, 119. 654 “Executive Committee Report to the Staff Meeting,” December 8, 1945, MSS 876/FAU/1948/2/2, Friends House Library; Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War, 1939-1946, 433.

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members would return to England with seventy remaining and of those, the FAU suggested twenty-five “seasoned relief workers” transfer to the FRS.655 By April 1946, an agreement was reached that came to be called, “Operation Chameleon.” Any FAU member wanting to continue work in Germany could transfer to a team associated with the FRS after June 30. For FAU members who wanted to continue to assist the FRS on a short-term basis could retain their khaki uniform, whereas those who believed they would stay beyond September 1946 to become full members of the FRS would make the change to wear the “Quaker Grey.”656

“Harvest Camps”

Although the FRS teams in Cologne and Brunswick had already begun work with local

German youth groups by the end of 1945 and beginning of 1946, other FRS teams in areas such as Solingen, Aachen, Dortmund and Hannover took over responsibility for relief programs and work conducted by the FAU among German youth and with German welfare organizations. An

FRS annual report for 1945 and 1946 outlined the plan and duties the FRS assumed following the closure of the FAU in June 1946. According to the report, the FRS hoped to inspire co-operation and tolerance among German children and encourage German welfare organizations to “work out their own plans rather than taking the initiative from them.”657 To do this, the FRS posited that their duties would include, “[N]egotiating with the Control Commission for premises and equipment, discussing plans with German bodies, arranging week-end excursions to the country for town children, promoting inter-club competitions and activities.”658 The “Harvest Camps”

655 “Notes on a Discussion on Future Relations Between the F.R.S. and F.A.U.,” January 23, 1946, FRS/1992/27, Friends House Library. 656 “Executive Committee Report to the Staff Meeting,” April 27, 1946, MSS 876/FAU/1948/2/2, Friends House Library. 657 Friends Relief Service, “Friends Relief Service Annual Report” (Friends Relief Service, 1946 1945), 13–14, 93/27/2, Imperial War Museum. 658 Friends Relief Service, 13–14.

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developed by the FRS RS154 in Soligen for youth over the age of fourteen exemplifies the aims of the FRS.

Beginning in July 1946, the FRS RS154 posted in Solingen initiated a program in which groups of twenty-five youth worked for individual farmers during the morning, spent afternoons and evenings in group and communal activities, and concluded each day at a dinner hosted by the farmer. When the team proposed the idea to various youth groups, such as Free German Youth and the Catholic Youth, the idea was taken up “enthusiastically.” The team described the Harvest

Camps as a “major operation” for the all the tasks needed to be accomplished in order for the youth camp accommodations to run efficiently, which included making arrangements with the

Bürgermeisters, obtaining permits from the Military Government for tents, and helping to establish camp infrastructure. Despite the preparation work, the FRS believed the Harvest Camps to be a valuable and constructive project: “Not only do the children really get enough to eat for their fortnight’s stay, but it helps us to get to know many of the local groups and their leaders, and it gives them a chance of living their group life as they have not been able to since 1933.”659

Although the point is not discussed in team reports, the Harvest Camps would have also promoted self-sufficiency and long-term self-help in conjunction with meeting physical and material needs by introducing German youth to farming practices and providing the opportunity to experience first-hand the challenges of local food production faced in the postwar period.

In the early days, however, not all of the youth groups expressed a willingness to cooperate with other groups in the camps. The FRS found that the Protestant youth had been apprehensive about “left-wing influence”—particularly the theoretically non-political Free German Youth

(Freie Deutsche Jugend) that re-emerged first in the Soviet Occupation Zone in March 1946 with

659 Magda Kelber, “RS154 Solingen Report No. 3,” July 16, 1946, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library.

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noticeably leftist or Communist leanings—and thus kept away from the larger mixed-youth camps.

The team report notes:

This whole argument for and against large camps has made us realize the difficulties of cooperation among groups of different outlook, and the fact that the problem is, to German groups, a very fundamental one. Actually, we would hardly expect English Scouts to camp together with communist youth groups at government request, and here in this country, we must probably allow the various organisations time to become sure of themselves before we expect them to expose themselves to the rough winds of mixed activities.660

The first season of Harvest Camps concluded in November and to celebrate the success of the program, the FRS team hosted a party at their house for the thirty-five camp leaders. During the party, the team noticed that the apprehension expressed by the Protestant youth faded. The

November report describes how games brought the groups together: “[I]t was great fun seeing the evangelical and otherwise fanatical youth leader in stitches of laughter over his own and the socialist girl’s efforts at drawing things such as ‘wax’, and ‘anger’, and ‘Quaker.’”661 After seeing the cooperation and friendliness across the various youth groups, the team turned to developing discussion groups, supporting a non-sectarian youth committee, and developing plans for youth centres in Solingen and Remscheid. Although slow to start, by February 1947 the youth groups in

Solingen formed a Jugendring, Youth Council, in which all youth movements were represented at meetings to discuss problems, develop cultural activities, and community work.662

The FRS team noticed, however, that by the following month the youth groups still had not fully embraced the idea of cooperation. A March 1947 report indicates that the Youth Office

(Jugendamt) in Solingen only supported the foundation of a Youth Center (Jugendheim) if the

FRS team accepted administrative responsibility, suggesting a lack of consensus, and thus preferring outside leadership. The team appreciated that the purpose of a Youth Center was to

660 Kelber. 661 Alex Bryan, “RS154 Solingen Report No. 7,” November 11, 1946, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library. 662 Alex Bryan, “RS154 Solingen Report No. 2,” February 9, 1947, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library.

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serve as a central meeting place for all youth groups, but that the German youth had to be responsible for the establishment and administration of the center themselves and if the FRS team undertook all the work to set-up the center, the chances of the center failing would be high. This reflects the FRS belief in self-help and an appreciation for the risks that accompany imposed cooperation. The team report on youth activities concludes, “It has always been our aim to try to bring the groups together and so we regret that still the Germans do not favour the idea. Its development must necessarily be slow, however, we feel there is no reason to despair.”663 The

FRS teams posted throughout the British Occupation Zone committed themselves to German youth and focused on providing and supporting opportunities for cooperation and collaboration across youth organizations, promoting self-sufficiency, and fostering a sense of community in the aftermath of war.

Quakerism and German Youth

The Heinzelmännchen, established in February 1946 with approximately 150 members, began as a Cologne youth group supported by the FRS team RS125. Heinzelmännchen, “The Elves of Cologne,” named themselves after the fairytale written by August Kopisch in 1836 that tells of small creatures who cleaned and completed work in the shops at night, as the as the “lazy” artisans of Cologne slept. Over the course of March and April 1946, the Heinzelmännchen grew in membership, appointed a representative committee, and began the process of creating a democratic constitution. Michael Lee believed the task of the FRS in providing encouragement to the club, working as a liaison between the club and the Military Government, and reconciling different

663 Alex Bryan, “RS154 Solingen Report No. 3,” March 10, 1947, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library.

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points of view between the older generation of Germans and youth within the club had by April

1946 been successfully completed. The FRS continued to take an active interest in the club.664

Despite sentiments expressed by local community members, including one comment made by a local Catholic priest that he supported the organization because the group was connected to the Quaker relief team, neither the FRS team members nor the Heinzelmännchen envisioned the club to be a “Quaker Youth Group.”665 The FRS team deliberated on whether to support a single independent youth organization or to remain independent and encourage all youth groups to cooperate together. In a May 1946 report, Lee reasoned that supporting a single organization would risk the FRS reputation for impartiality.666 Individual members of the Heinzelmännchen club, however, expressed interest in Quakerism, attended a Monthly Meeting, and in June, ten

Heinzelmännchen and three young German Friends attended a Quaker youth conference in Bad

Pyrmont organized by a young German Quaker, Horst Legatis. The conference comprised of fifty attendees and included groups of youth from the British, French, and American Occupation Zones and included representatives from Catholic, Socialist, and Communist youth groups.667

The program consisted of talks given by German Quakers on Quaker ideas and the implication of those ideas on contemporary society, followed by formal and informal discussions among the presenters and attendees. Lee reported that the purpose of the conference had been, “to give a wider circle of young people an opportunity of learning about Quaker ideas, in the hope that some of them might find what they had been looking for. The success of the conference can be judged by the fact that the Heinzelmännchen who went came back determined to spread to the rest of the club the ideas they had learnt there, i.e. pacifism, tolerance, understanding and personal

664 Lee, “RS/125/FRS, Cologne,” April 25, 1946. 665 Lee, “RS/125/FRS, Cologne,” March 23, 1946. 666 Michael Lee, “RS125 Cologne Report No. 21,” May 9, 1946, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library. 667 “RS125 Cologne Report No. 24,” July 9, 1946, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library.

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responsibility.”668 Upon returning from the Quaker youth conference, the Heinzelmännchen held weekly meetings for interested members centered on talks and discussions similar in direction and content to those at the Bad Pyrmont conference. Although team reports do not indicate how the weekly meetings transpired, or even offer specific club activities beyond the summer of 1946, the

Heinzelmännchen represents the first youth organization to cooperate with the FRS team and express interest in Quaker ideas by independently attending Monthly Meetings. The FRS teams posted in the British Occupation Zone seemed more concerned with fostering cooperation between various religious groups as a means of reconciliation rather than proselytization.669 There were, however, several young Friends’ in Cologne and throughout the region who turned to the FRS teams for support and assistance as they developed their own meetings and sought their own approaches to reconciliation.

Over the course of 1946, several young Friends in Cologne, Aachen, Bonn, Oberhausen,

Solingen, and Wuppertal created local discussion groups, attended Friends’ meetings, and participated in regional conferences such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation Conference for

Youth. On February 28, 1946 the FAU and FRS arranged for Pastor Wilhelm Mensching and

Nevin Sayre, the American representative of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), to visit Cologne. The following day, German youth primarily from the British Zone and a few from Frankfurt (US) and Stuttgart (French) attended lectures given by Pastor Mensching, Professor

Hess, and Emil Fuchs on the topic of “reconciliation,” and Richard Ullmann of the FRS RS7 team in Aachen spoke on the “inner mental task” of German youth. 670 The speakers as well as

668 “RS/125/FRS, Cologne.” 669 Yvonne Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 14,” May 31, 1946, FRS/1992/73, Friends House Library; Kelber, “RS/154/FRS, Solingen,” July 16, 1946; Magda Kelber, “RS154 Solingen Report No. 4,” August 13, 1946, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library; Lee, “RS/125/FRS, Cologne,” May 9, 1946. 670 “Mitteilungsblatt: Des Versöhnungsbundes Gruppe Rheinland Und Westfalen” (Köln: The Friends Relief Service, August 1947), EZA 230/366 Jungfreunde (HA Christa Oechslin), 1947-1948, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv in Berlin, Archiv der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland; Lee, “RS/125/FRS, Cologne,” March 23, 1946.

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participants understood that the task set before German youth centered on the “spiritual recovery of Europe,” fostering understanding between people and nations, and to overcome both the past and “bitter judgements” that could only happen through “patience,” “love,” and “a deep conviction that peace.”671

Following the conference, the Cologne FOR group sought the continuance of lectures, to encourage discussion and debate among members, creation of an organizational newsletter for

Rhineland and Westphalia, and to connect with foreign countries through correspondence or direct aid.672 In June, three members of the FRS and five Cologne Youth Friends attended a second conference held in Bad Pyrmont. Of the conference, the FRS reported:

About 80 young people from varying denominations and political shades met there to discuss Christianity and Socialism, peace movements in England, pacifism, the unifying aspect of Christianity, U.N.O. and the League of Nations and ‘What Quakerism means to me’ led by Karl Hermann. […] The ideas of the F.O.R., tolerance, respect for the beliefs of others, the need to co-operate with like-minded people from all religions and nationalities were rather new to some of those present; but as the week drew to a close the spirit of reconciliation and a greater understanding of the values and beliefs underlying the F.O.R. brought all present together into a unity.673

The three members who attended the conference believed that the exchanging of ideas among young people and establishing contact with “older and wiser men and women” fostered an eagerness in the young Friends to promote “peace, goodwill and tolerance” among nations as well as between German individuals and groups. In August, two team members and two Cologne

Friends visited Solingen to help establish a local branch of the FOR.674 These meetings and conferences reflect the internationalism fostered in the interwar Quaker Centers.

671 “Mitteilungsblatt: Des Versöhnungsbundes Gruppe Rheinland Und Westfalen.” 672 “Mitteilungsblatt: Des Versöhnungsbundes Gruppe Rheinland Und Westfalen.” 673 “RS/125/FRS, Cologne,” July 9, 1946. 674 Kelber, “RS/154/FRS, Solingen,” August 13, 1946.

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The English Society

In November 1945, Professor Helmut Papajewski, Professor of English and later chair of the English Department at the University of Cologne, approached the FRS team RS125. Professor

Papajewski sought cooperation from the FRS to encourage his students and the team members to meet in order to discuss contemporary events and practice the English language. By December

1946, the small group formally established themselves as the “English Society,” and by January the original small group grew to include eighty members.675

In a note dated December 3, 1946, the English Society Secretary, Valentin Grewe wrote to

Dr. Harry Beckhoff, University Education Control Officer (UECO) of the CCG/BE, identified the club sponsor as Professor Papajewski, listed members of the club committee, and outlined the statues of the new organization. The statues included three points: first, that members can include all students regardless of their religious and political beliefs; second, that each member shall pay five Reichsmarks per semester; and third, the goals of the club were to promote knowledge of the

English Language and culture, as well as maintain “student coexistence” or community.676 As one of six UECOs in the British Occupation Zone, Dr. Beckhoff had the role of supervising the material reconstruction and democratization of universities by reporting on the status of students and staff, denazification, progress or repair to building conditions, on matters regarding the administrative organization of the institute, and on teaching and research. Each of the six university UECO branches produced a monthly report covering those topics and developments within their institution to the Education Branch in Bünde.677 Thus, any new or re-established university club

675 Valentin Grewe, “English Society,” December 3, 1946, 28/824, Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln; Michael Lee, “RS125 Cologne Report No. 11,” December 29, 1945, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library; Bunty Harman, “RS125 Cologne Report No. 30,” December 7, 1946, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library. 676 Grewe, “English Society,” December 3, 1946. 677 Euros, “The Post-War British ‘Re-Education’ Policy for German Universities and Its Application at the Universities of Göttingen and Cologne (1945-1947),” 250–51.

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or organization, such as the English Society, would have been required to report to their UECO and that officer would determine whether or not the club conformed to the policies and aims of the

Education Branch of the CCG/BE.

The first meeting of the English Society addressed themes that dominated the post-war public sphere. Held on February 23, 1946, the first meeting initially planned to discuss the

Nuremberg Trials only but expanded their discussion to include Niemöller’s “confession of

German guilt,” the politics and growth of democracy, and the question of press objectivity and impartiality in the British Occupation Zone. This first meeting is significant for two reasons. First, although team members actively participated in the discussion sessions with the university students, the reports suggest they did not engage paternalistically as “us” to “them,” which reflects the training they received at Mount Waltham in England and the Quaker tradition of encouraging reconciliation and reawakening civic consciousness and engagement among an important demographic in postwar Germany. Second, the discussion underscores the interest of university students to discuss these topics while at the same time struggling on how to discuss and process such politically and socially relevant, perhaps even controversial, topics.

With that, two of the topics discussed—the trials in Nuremberg and Martin Niemöller’s

“confession of German guilt”—shared a common thread, the question of “collective guilt.” The students expressed a concern that the events and attitudes echoed those following the Great War and stemmed from the conditions set on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles. The FRS volunteers, based on the lectures given at Mount Waltham, were familiar with this history, in particular that the Treaty of Versailles produced “bitterness” and “resentment” among the German population after 1919. The team also knew that the process of reconciliation could not begin if these views

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persisted, but that any attempt to impose a perspective on the students without discussion and understanding of the conditions in the past and the present would be moot.

The Nuremberg Trials, which has begun only three months prior in November 1945, used by the Allies to establish a public historical record on war crimes, generated spirited discussion among the German public. On the Nuremberg trials, the students took the view that the process could not be considered “impartial justice” since Germany was alone in the dock. The team suggested to the students that, “it was not Germany but certain individual Nazis who were on trial.”678 Though agreeing that this was the case, they continued the discussion that Germany was a nation on trial. They also believed that the trials would determine the goods and wealth that would be taken from Germany, and that the trials were “staged in order to justify in the eyes of the world what the Allies intended to take from Germany in any case.”679 This last point certainly reflected the concern that, like with the Treaty of Versailles, the German population would be held financially accountable for the war, which risked a return to economic disfunction and disaster.

Likewise, Pastor Niemöller’s confession in the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt (Stuttgarter

Schuldbekenntnis) in October 1945 that the German Protestant church failed to oppose the criminal policies of the NS regime, also produced a great amount of public controversy. According to the

FRS report, the discussion on Niemöller’s confession upset and annoyed the students, “though none of them appeared to know exactly what he had said or to have had any more accurate reports than second-hand ones.” 680 The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt issued by the Council of the

Protestant Church of Germany (EKD) in October 1945 was an attempt among the German church

678 Michael Lee, “RS125 Cologne Report No. 15 Appendix I,” February 11, 1946, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library. 679 Lee. 680 Lee.

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leaders to, “acknowledge their errors and publicly repent.”681 The meeting at Stuttgart began with a public service of worship, during which Niemöller suggested in a sermon that the Nazis alone were not responsible, but that the church must also admit guilt. Two days later the EKD issued the official and signed Declaration, which read:

We are especially grateful for this visit, because we know that we, along with our people, are not only in a community of suffering, but also in a community of guilt. It causes us great anguish to state that we have brought unimaginable, unending suffering upon many peoples and many countries. We have often testified to in our communities, we now declare in the name of the whole church: it is true that we fought for many long years against the spirit that found its terrible expression in the violent National Socialist regime; however, we also accuse ourselves of not having professed our faith more courageously, of not having prayed more faithfully, of not having believed more joyfully, and of not having loved more fervently.682

The intention of the German church leaders had not been to release the Declaration publicly fearing the response of the German population to a notion of “collective guilt”; and, as Matthew Hockenos points out, it was not distributed even to clergy and laity.683 The plan did not work out as the

Declaration was leaked to the British press and appeared first in London newspapers and then in

German newspapers.684 The statement, “a community of guilt,” reminded Germans of the “war- guilt clause” in the Treaty of Versailles and as Hockenos argues, eye-catching headlines with terms such as “Germany’s War Guilt” prompted a misunderstanding of the of the declaration itself as a discussion of guilt within and among the church and its leaders. 685 Nevertheless, students expressed the view that admission of guilt on behalf of the German people was beyond Niemöller’s purview. Students felt that this confession of guilt seemed like a ploy in order to receive better treatment despite the alleged war crimes, crimes of which they had no involvement and for which

681 Matthew D. Hockenos, Church Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), 75, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/wvu/detail.action?docID=255639. 682 “Statement by the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany to the Representatives of the Ecumenical Council of Churches,” October 19, 1945, http://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=4455. 683 Hockenos, Church Divided, 82. 684 Hockenos, 82. 685 Hockenos, 82–83.

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they did “not feel guilty.” 686 One student pointed out the German people were to blame, but not for what Niemöller suggested. When asked to elaborate on what the German people were at blame for, the student was unsure and said more time was needed to contemplate it.

The second and third discussions, on the growth of democracy and inadequacy of the postwar press, demonstrated an expression of youth disillusionment, nihilism, and uncertainty. The students held the view that they would prefer to, “‘get away’ from parties and politics,” and would prefer a party that was “‘above parties.’”687 Although they suggested this might be an unrealistic idea, when asked about how to separate politics from government, the FRS noted the students’ responses were vague and unsure how to accomplish that aim. When the FRS asked how they felt about participation in government, the students again responded with uncertainty.688 The students argued, however, that, “there was no hope for the future in the life-time of this generation: that it would be impossible to a German Government to develop since the means of a national life were being removed from Germany; that it was dangerous to express the patriotism one felt since this would be confused with Nazified nationalism.” 689 The students remained mistrustful of a representative political system and struggled with the idea of a new German government absent an emphasis on nationalism.

With regard to newspapers, the FRS reported that students were frustrated with the lack and inadequacy of information and newspapers available. The report notes that the students wanted a “non-political” newspaper and when asked whether the Cologne Courier (Kölnischer Kurier ) was non-political, the students’ responses were non-committal.690 According to Christian Glossner,

686 Lee, “RS/125/FRS, Cologne,” February 11, 1946. 687 Lee. 688 Lee. 689 Lee. 690 Lee.

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prior to the end of the war the American Office of War Information and the Anglo-American

Psychological Warfare Division of the SHAEF planned to destroy all Nazi press and establish new press in postwar Germany.691 Glossner emphasizes that the process envisioned would happen in three systematic states beginning first with a ban on all publishing and dissolving of editorial departments, followed by the publication and dissemination of overt publications

(Heeresgruppen-Zeitungen) by military authorities. Eventually these publications would transfer responsibility back to German information services as the Allies continued to supervise publications.692 The Cologne Courier, one of thirteen publications, served as a local weekly newspaper in Cologne and offered information regarding local news as well as standardized content on all zones that had been supervised by military authorities. Thus, the students’ assessment or attitude toward the newspaper as a tool of the Allies and Military Governments is on point, further reflecting their desire for freedom of the press or, at least, an impartial one. The

FRS and students agreed to continue the conversation at the next meeting and focus on the role of the British press.

The FRS considered the first meeting of the English Society a success. One week after the first meeting, during the March 4 conference of German Youth and Schools at Bünde, Lieutenant-

Colonel K. M. Agnew of the BRCS HQ5 reported that the meeting illustrated, “the confused state of mind of the [German students].”693 The non-committal responses of the students and “confused state of mind” reflects the immediate shock among students to the destruction caused by the war, the capitulation of the Nazi state.694 In her work, Euros cites a report from Dr. Beckhoff, in which

691 Christian L. Glossner, Making of the German Post-War Economy: Political Communication and Public Reception of the Social Market Economy After World War Two (I.B.Tauris, 2010), 17. 692 Glossner, 17–18. 693 “Report of Conference on Youth and Schools in Germany at Bünde.” 694 Euros, “The Post-War British ‘Re-Education’ Policy for German Universities and Its Application at the Universities of Göttingen and Cologne (1945-1947),” 256.

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he describes the University of Cologne student body at the end of 1945 as “mentally paralysed;” yet a change in attitude occurred over the course of 1946 and 1947 as students at the university gained a keen interest in global affairs and began organizing activities and clubs, discussion groups, and a student newspaper.695 This was reflected in the increased engagement in and discussions of the English Society; by late 1946 the English Society held weekly conversation classes as well as bi-monthly meetings covered topics such as “Religious Education,” Socialism and “the right to strike,” “The new English Education Act,” and “Cambridge University.”696

The English Society approached the FRS in June 1946 to request access to international academic publications from Britain, the FRS obliged and even offered to establish correspondence between members of the Society and university students in England. By September and October of that year, two female English students from London University travelled to Cologne for a three- week visit and the FRS organized introductions to several of the students and with others connected to the University of Cologne.697 The visit had been a small part of a larger international academic exchange between universities in England and the University of Cologne aimed at “re-education” and democratization of Germany.

An article in the 1946 Christmas edition of the University of Cologne student newspaper,

Kölner Universitäts-Zeitung, titled “Should we help the students of Cologne?” described a debate held among the student body at the University of Bristol, the chairman of the Students’ Committee of the Cologne Student Union, and Dr. Beckhoff regarding the spiritual and physical state of

German university students, the role of universities as “supranational,” and the nature of the

695 Euros, 258; “Kölner Universitäts-Zeitung” (Universität zu Köln, 1948 1946), RHPER4-NS1/3.1946/48, Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln. 696 Maw, The Training and Experience of a Quaker Relief Worker, 1946-1948, 338; Lee, “RS/125/FRS, Cologne,” March 23, 1946; Bunty Harman, “RS125 Cologne Report No. 32,” March 8, 1947, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library; Doris Raper, “RS125 Cologne Report No. 36,” June 1, 1947, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library; “RS125 Cologne Report No. 43,” January 1, 1948, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library. 697 Bunty Harman, “RS125 Cologne Report No. 27,” October 7, 1946, FRS/1992/75, Friends House Library.

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relationship between the two universities.698 The English students present at the debate determined that the University, international in character, needed to set aside prejudices and misunderstandings in order to both support and cooperate with German university students. During a question and answer session, the students asked Dr. Beckhoff about the status of Hitler Youth in

German universities, the vetting process of those students, and whether or not students have moved beyond the Nazi faith. Dr. Beckhoff responded that as many of the youth had been brought into the Hitler Youth program between the ages of eleven and twelve, that of course there would be university students with that background and in positions of leadership. He argued, however, that connections between the two universities will help those in Germany move beyond Nazism and if given the opportunity to show a democratic spirit (“demokratischen Geist”), the students can help bring peace to the world and prevent the past from reviving once again.699 The author, in agreement with Dr. Beckhoff and supportive of the relationship between the universities, suggested that it must be the wish of German students to re-engage with students on an international level, to reshape their future based on mutual understanding, and recognize that the aim of building a better order can only be accomplished as a mutual endeavor.700 Following a UECO conference in July

1946, the University of Bristol and the University of Cologne became “‘twinned’ universities” that resulted in the formation of liaisons between the two.701 Although the reports do not indicate participation of the FRS in programs developed between the University of Cologne and the

698 “Should we help the students of Cologne?” (Universität zu Köln, January 1947), 108–9, RHPER4- NS1/3.1946/48, Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln. 699 “Should we help the students of Cologne?,” 109. 700 “Should we help the students of Cologne?,” 109. 701 Euros, “The Post-War British ‘Re-Education’ Policy for German Universities and Its Application at the Universities of Göttingen and Cologne (1945-1947),” 258; Cindy Naumann, “The Rebirth of Educational Exchange: Anglo-German University Level Youth Exchange Programmes after the Second World War,” Research in Comparative and International Education 2, no. 4 (December 1, 2007): 363, https://doi.org/10.2304/rcie.2007.2.4.355.

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University of Bristol, the spirit of these discussions and programs clearly echo and align with the

FRS and Quaker approach to international reconciliation.

The establishment of the English Society, similar to the creation and rebuilding of German youth groups, provided a space that fostered a sense of community after the war. The “re-education” of university students did not serve as a solution to “juvenile delinquency,” but rather centered on open discussion and internationalism. This enabled the university students to break out of a

“mental stagnation,” engage with the FRS on topics of interest, and receive support for developing international contacts and networking. In his work, Winning the Peace: The British in Occupied

Germany, 1945-1948, Christopher Knowles suggests that by the spring of 1947, as the British began the transfer of power to Germans, and that the development of Anglo-German discussion groups between 1946 and 1948 served as a means by which the British could continue to exert some influence over the future of development in Germany.702 Those discussion groups, such as the Hamburg International Club, also served as agents of reconciliation for fostering notions of

“mutual tolerance and understanding” between the British and Germans. Ultimately, the CCG/BE hoped their interaction with and the “re-education” of university students would result a generation that could take the lead in developing a more democratic Germany. Even prior to the end of the war, the FRS envisioned their work to be inclusive to reconciliation and once in Germany, the discussions between the team and members the English Society certainly promoted reconciliation and understanding between Germans and Britons; a point only later realized by the leaders in the

CCG/BE.

702 Knowles, Winning the Peace: The British in Occupied Germany, 1945-1948, 118–21.

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Conclusions

Based on the belief in a “brotherhood of all mankind” the FAU and FRS asserted impartiality during their efforts of relief, rehabilitation, and in reconciliation among suffering populations in the British Occupation Zone in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and postwar period. The organizations found that not only were DPs and victims of the Nazi state were not the only unlnerable civilians vulnerable and in dire need of material, physical and spiritual assistance. In fact, millions of Germans and displaced ethnic Germans throughout the zone also required material, social, and spiritual relief. Although both organizations aided in emergency relief associated with their understanding of the “first stage” of relief as emphasized in “Operation

Stork,” they also stayed on to support the “second” and “third stages” aimed at long-term rehabilitation and reconciliation among various groups of German civilians. This chapter explored two groups—German youth and university students.

Working under the auspices and policies of the Military Government and UNRRA, the

FAU and FRS initiated programs promoting democratization and de-Nazification through “re- education” among German youth. These efforts began with aiding in the establishment or reestablishment of German youth organizations and programs. The FAU, given the opportunity to turn from DP camps to German relief work, reported on and acted as liaisons between local

German communities, the CCG/BE, as well as outside parties interested in redeveloping programs aimed at fostering internationalism. Although the training offered at Manor Farm did not cover the development of rehabilitation programs or approaches to fostering internationalism, the FAU teams could draw on their experiences in surveying during the Battle of Britain that brought the needs of a suffering population to the attention of local authorities whilst opening the door for both relief and rehabilitation opportunities. The lessons given at Mount Waltham that highlighted

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approaches to and interwar programs aimed at fostering internationalism as a means to promote reconciliation proved fruitful as FRS teams worked with and alongside German youth and university organizations in the British Occupation Zone. Furthermore, the essence of the FAU as an organization to serve as an outlet for conscientious objectors and pacifists provided the members with the opportunity to witness a way of life outside of war, a lesson that could be translated to those in need of spiritual rehabilitation.

To be sure, the FAU recognized that team members posted to Germany could not meet the changing nature and needs of relief work among Germans, and therefore in the early months of

1946 began the transfer of team members to organizations such as the FRS whose mission and work centered on the second and third stages of relief, rehabilitation, and reconciliation. In turn, the FRS not only absorbed many of those members into their own teams, but also adopted the work of the FAU in supporting German youth. Despite initial goals of developing non-religious, non- political youth organizations in Germany, such organizations emerged over the course of 1946 and

1947, and did so under the direction of “democratic” structures. Acknowledging that the German youth and university students represented the future of Germany, the teams drew on Quaker war relief traditions by focusing on impartiality, rehabilitation, and reconciliation among and between those targeted groups, across German communities, and between nations.

The FRS teams took various approaches to reconciliation in their work with German civilians. Central to their work, however, had been the fostering of two key components— cooperation and understanding. The FRS training camps focused on these components in their courses by offering insights into contemporary attitudes and experiences among Europeans and incorporating past experiences and approaches—both the successful and unsuccessful—to rehabilitation work. The FRS believed that the task of rebuilding a community following the

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destruction of war, as well as reestablishing confidence among those within the community, required working democratically and cooperatively. This could not be achieved through imposed collaborative structures, rather the practice and work of cooperation needed to be a goal and practice sincerely felt by all those involved. The FRS illustrated how this approach could be initiated and fostered by engaging, supporting, and promoting discussion groups among youth groups and university students, which certainly echoed programs established in Quaker Centers during the interwar period. Their training in contemporary European history and recent events, as well as courses in European languages, enabled the British volunteers to listen and understand the concerns and experiences of the traumatized German youth. As discussed, the teams implemented the lessons and philosophy they learned during their training to avoid engaging with Germany, especially the youth or students as “us to them,” but instead to acknowledge and appreciate the concerns, problems, and developments expressed by German civilians as a member of larger emerging European community.

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CHAPTER TWELVE: CONCLUSIONS

A lecture given at the FRS training camp, Mount Waltham, titled, “Current Trends in Post-

War Thought,” concluded with the following remark:

[I]f Hitler is only the perversion of our own lusts, the symptom of our own disease, we still have to do those things which we left undone after the last war which produced this. Men must so increase their wisdom as to fit themselves to meet the challenge of their power. The real issue is not what is the most hopeful political and economic formula but rather what is the truth to be served by man. Total peace is the only real answer to total war, it is total peace not for nations but for individual men and women, ‘life manifest in the individual’.703

The lecturer suggested that the poor condition and state of humanity in 1943, at the time the lecture was given, had not been the product of one individual but instead the consequence of the actions, or deficiency of actions, by humankind. To remedy the “disease” plaguing humanity—hatred, tyranny, indifference, ignorance, and poverty—men and women must engage in self-reflection and look beyond self-interest. Men and women should avail themselves of the opportunity to promote kindness, generosity, peace, and understanding in society. This advice echoed the convictions of

Quakers and their aims in providing relief.

The Quakers believe in an Inner Light that is shared across humankind, and that by engaging in relief, rehabilitation, and through fostering reconciliation in moments of suffering they could show men, women, and children an alternative way of life to war and violence. This dissertation investigated the ways in which the FAU and FRS conceptualized relief and rehabilitation, utilized various sources and materials to prepare volunteers for postwar aid, and how the organizations implemented that preparation and training during and immediately after the

Second World War in the British Occupation Zone in Germany.

703 “Course I: European Background 24 Current Trends in Post-War Thought.”

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Scholars working on humanitarian organizations have examined “planning-mindedness” as the departure from ad hoc and laissez faire forms of and approaches to humanitarian aid from a variety of perspectives and by different agents. Those included top-down narratives focused on the

United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, think tanks and military planners who often had first-hand experience in relief during the Great War and interwar years, and to a lesser extent, among smaller voluntary organizations.704 Determined to avoid the overlap and chaos that characterized humanitarian aid during and after the Great War, scholars suggest those dedicated to “planning-mindedness” sought to provide a framework for increased collaboration, utilize contemporary reports on wartime conditions of Europe and the potential crises to be confronted at the conclusion of the war, as well as to establish a system to efficiently and effectively meet the needs of suffering populations. Within this scholarship are the few that extend their examination to include the postwar period by highlighting the successes and failures of relief organizations in

Europe.705 These works lend to the rich and diverse body of scholarship dedicated to postwar humanitarian aid that examine the populations receiving aid, the organizations and agencies that provided aid, and in some instances assessment of both perspectives.706

704 Reinisch, “Introduction: Relief in the Aftermath of War”; Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924; Steinert, “British Humanitarian Assistance: Wartime Planning and Postwar Realities”; Shephard, “‘Becoming Planning Minded’: The Theory and Practice of Relief 1940-1945”; Cohen, “Between Relief and Politics: Refugee Humanitarianism in Occupied Germany 1945-1946”; Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War. 705 Shephard, “‘Becoming Planning Minded’: The Theory and Practice of Relief 1940-1945”; Steinert, “British Humanitarian Assistance: Wartime Planning and Postwar Realities”; Cohen, “Between Relief and Politics: Refugee Humanitarianism in Occupied Germany 1945-1946”; Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War; Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order. 706 Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951; Atina Grossmann, “Victims, Villains, and Survivors: Gendered Perceptions and Self-Perceptions of Jewish Displaced Persons in Occupied Postwar Germany,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, no. 1 and 2 (2002): 291–318; Frank, “Working for the Germans: British Voluntary Societies and the German Refugee Crisis, 1945-50”; Frank, Expelling the Germans: British Opinion and Post-1945 Population Transfer in Context; Tara Zahra, “‘The Psychological Marshall Plan’: Displacement, Gender, and Human Rights after World War II,” Central European History, Human Rights, Utopias, and Gender in Twentieth-Century Europe, 44, no. 1 (2011): 37–62; Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War; Gemie et al., Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War 1936-48; Gatrell,

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Although this scholarship has served as an anchor for this dissertation, the intention of this project has been to shift attention away from the large, international, and intergovernmental relief organizations that emerged during the war and towards the smaller voluntary organizations that came to wartime and post-1945 relief with both traditions and experience in war relief. This project contributes to the limited literature on voluntary organizations engaged in wartime planning by offering a more comprehensive and careful analysis of the training and preparation efforts made by these organizations, and in particular, the British FAU and FRS. Finally, by linking wartime planning, evidenced in the training programs developed by the FAU and FRS, to postwar relief work this dissertation illustrates the process of the organizational adaptation, and provides nuance to the perceptions and assumptions made by these organizations during the war and the realities they faced in postwar Europe.

The FAU and FRS did not emerge as new organizations in 1939 and 1943, respectively, based on a set of established values and principles, they had important precedents spanning the nineteenth century and continuing to the declaration of war in 1939. Significantly, these two organizations utilized their immediate experiences during the Great War and interwar years to conceptualize their role in relief work in three stages. The FAU, as an “unofficial” Quaker relief organization, continued the mandate of the organization established during the Great War that focused on the first stage of relief characterized by impartial emergency, medical, and ambulance relief services alongside military bodies. In contrast, the FRS came into formation as the result of cooperation between the FAU and the FWVRC whose traditions and experiences in war relief work began in the nineteenth century. The FRS, then, conceptualized their role in postwar relief within the second and third stages of relief as impartial aid directed at civilian bodies only and

The Making of the Modern Refugee; Graham-Dixon, The Allied Occupation of Germany: The Refugee Crisis, Denazification and the Path to Reconstruction; Zahra, The Lost Children.

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encompassed emergency relief, although to a lesser extent than the FAU, as well as both short- and long-term rehabilitation and reconciliation.

Not unlike other contemporaries, they saw themselves as part, as well as beneficiaries, of the new outlook and approach to humanitarian aid— “planning-mindedness.” The FAU training program at Manor Farm and the FRS program at Mount Waltham utilized the experience of members to provide examples of successful and unsuccessful relief programs during and after the

Great War. The Battle of Britain in 1940 introduced the FAU and early members of the FRS working with the FWVRC or other relief organizations to the field of relief as they worked in air raid shelters, rest centers, and other areas of domestic relief. The FAU, in particular, understood that work as both necessary and as an opportunity for additional training as some aspects of that work had not been covered in the six-week program at Manor Farm. The organizations also integrated the voices and advice of field experts, as well as contemporary reports and research on the conditions in Europe as a means to better inform trainees and shape postwar expectations regarding relief and rehabilitation. Finally, the organizations worked cooperatively by allowing and encouraging trainees to attend and participate in both training programs in an attempt to provide trainees with a wide variety of skills and knowledge useful to relief work. The key themes and approaches emphasized in the FAU and FRS programs included the importance of impartial and democratic relief, building or aiding in the rebuilding of communities, encouraging self-help among receiving populations, and fostering reconciliation through internationalism and peace as an alternative to war.

The realities of war, from its destruction of the landscape and infrastructure to its effect on displacement across Europe, could not have been fully comprehended or realized during wartime training. The technological advances in the modes and methods of warfare, the global scope of the

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war, and the social, political, and economic damage inflicted on Europeans proved unprecedented.

In this context, the FAU and FRS relief teams both adapted themselves to the brutal postwar conditions, and both implemented learned skills in their relief efforts and improvised according to the challenges and needs of suffering populations in the months leading up to and in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

Between the autumn of 1944 and the winter of 1945/1946, the two organizations worked in the first and second stages of relief by focusing on limiting the spread of disease, registering, distributing clothing and food impartially to DPs, refugees, concentration camp survivors, and the

German population. Those relief efforts largely focused on physical and material relief, incorporated elements of self-help and democratic approaches by enlisting the help of those among the populations whose physical recovery permitted them to help those around them and within their community, and by involving the receiving population in the development of relief programs.

Beginning in 1946, the nature of relief transitioned into the second and third stages, and the FAU and FRS found that their mandate, experience, and reputation enabled them to work in capacities deemed inappropriate to military bodies and outside the auspices of the UNRRA, primarily as liaisons between the German populations and military authorities. 707 The two organizations worked with and alongside DP and German populations in programs aimed at building and rebuilding communities, physical and spiritual rehabilitation, and in the encouragement of reconciliation between the various ethnic and national groups in the British Occupied Zone through tenants of internationalism, peace, and mutual understanding.

Relief provided during the three overlapping stages faced significant challenges. The destruction caused to the infrastructure and impairment of public, social, and welfare services

707 Frank, “Working for the Germans: British Voluntary Societies and the German Refugee Crisis, 1945-50,” 173.

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ensured that the relief teams faced constant challenges in an environment of epidemic illness, overcrowding, and constant need. Relief organizations across Europe also experienced a shortage of foodstuff, supplies, transport resources, and materials necessary for the development and implementation of relief programs. The programs developed by the relief teams with the purpose of fostering internationalism and reconciliation had been met with varying degrees of success.

Those that proved unsuccessful—typically resulting from an imposed rather than from spontaneous and genuine interest—tested the confidence of relief teams but also inspired teams to take innovative approaches.

In conclusion, by situating the relief efforts by the FAU and FRS in post-1945 occupied

Germany into the larger context of their participation and use of planning in during the war, as well as Quaker conviction, core principles and traditions established decades, even centuries, prior, this work provides a more nuanced perspective to humanitarian aid in the mid-twentieth century.

In a lecture on the motivation and administration of Quaker relief work during the Second World

War presented at the Swarthmore Lecture in 1949, Roger Wilson poignantly argued that “true efficiency” in relief work, “is the result of good planning and good execution, so that the end product is achieved with the least expenditure of laborious effort—or alternatively that the outlay of much effort results in a correspondingly rich result.”708 Perhaps humanitarian action in post-

1945 Germany should not be measured by “successes” or “failures,” but instead according to the intentions, means, and methods of the people who worked on-the-ground, with, and alongside suffering populations.

708 Wilson, Swarthmore Lecture, 1949, 65.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY